ILOILO CITY – Communist rebels ambushed and killed two soldiers and wounded two others in San Remigio town in Antique Friday, barely a week after the Communist Party of the Philippines called for more offensives against government troops

The soldiers belonging to the 31st Reconnaissance Company of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division were walking along the national highway and were on their way back to their base in Barangay Aningalan when they were attacked by around 20 New People’s Army rebels, Lt. Col Erwin de Asis, spokesperson of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, said. The 3ID covers Central and Western Visayas.

De Asis said a strong explosion believed to be from a command-detonated landmine preceded the firing from the rebels who were positioned at an elevated area at the side of the road.

“They were on a vantage point,” De Asis said in a telephone interview.

De Asis identified the fatalities as Cpl. Francisco Silvila, the team leader, and Pfc. Joey Yntas. Wounded were Pfcs. Arthur Azarcon and Rodolfo Domopoy.

Azarcon was initially reported as missing but was found by government troops around the 8 a.m. yesterday with bullet wounds in his arm. He had hidden in the forested area near the ambush site overnight until troop reinforcements found him.

De Asis said the soldiers were part of the security force that escorted San Remigio Mayor Elizabeth Coloso last Friday. Coloso had presided over the inauguration rites of a school building in Barangay Alegria and spoke before the elementary school graduation rites in the neighboring Barangay Bulan-Bulan.

The ambush site is around 31 kms from the town proper of San Remigio. The town is around 21 kms northeast of the capital town of San Jose in Antique.

Coloso’s party had gone ahead but the mayor could also have been the target of the attack, said De Asis.

The rebels fled after a 15-minute firefight and took with them the two M-16 rifles of the fatalities.

Capt. Lowen Gil Marquez, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ 32nd Civil Relation Unit, said the rebels were under the NPA’s Napoleon Tumagtang Command of the Southern Front Committee of the CPP in Panay.

Troops assisted by helicopter gunships are conducting pursuit operations against the rebels who fled towards the mountainous areas straddling Antique and Iloilo provinces.

De Asis accused the rebels of being anti-development for attacking troops who were only securing the inauguration rites of the school building.

San Remigio has been a traditional hotbed of the insurgency since the 1970s. In August 2004, a policeman, a soldier and a civilian were killed in a rebel ambush there.

The attack came six days after the NPA’s 39th founding anniversary on March 29.

In its statement posted at its website (www.philippinerevolution.net) marking the NPA anniversary, the CPP Central Committee had directed the NPA to step up its offensives against government troops and to increase its guerilla fronts from 120 to 173 to cover all congressional districts.

The AFP is targeting the strategic defeat of the rebels by 2010 and has announced that it has neutralized its targeted guerrilla fronts last year. But this has been belittled by the CPP.

In a statement it issued, the CPP said that the US-directed Arroyo regime is engaged in wishful thinking repeatedly announcing that it will destroy or reduce the people's armed revolution before 2010. It added that history has shown that the Marcos regime failed to destroy the movement from 1969 to 1986, and merely succeeded in generating conditions for the growth and advance of the NPA and other revolutionary forces.*NPB

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The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division yesterday condemned the New People’s Army for using landmines in the recent ambush of two soldiers escorting a mayor who was inspecting an infrastructure project in San Remegio, Antique.

Lt. Col. Erwin de Asis, 3rd ID Public Information Officer, yesterday said the NPA use of a landmine is deplorable…and another proof of their defiance to the international ban on its use.

De Asis said San Remegio Mayor Elizabeth Coloso was supposed to be the target of the New People’s Army, as she is a staunch campaigner for peace and development in Antique.*GPB

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