IN BACOLOD
Policemen probe
stray bullet case

The police are now trying to trace the source of the stray bullet that hit a house in Bacolod City during the celebration to welcome the New Year Tuesday.

Police Station 6 commander, Senior Inspector Ulysses Ortiz, said the slug recovered from the residence of Myrna Knoke at Brgy. Taculing, in the city, will be submitted to the Bacolod City Police Office Crime Laboratory Division to determine the caliber of the gun used to fire it.

If the Firearms, Explosives, Security Agency, and Guards Supervision office has a specimen of the gun and it matches with the traces on the bullet, charges could be filed against its owner, Ortiz said.

He also said his check of the service firearms of his members and the seals on the guns' nozzles showed them intact, proving that they have not been fired during New Year's Eve.

In a television interview, Knoke said she and her family members were preparing their food at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday when she heard a loud bang on their roof over the sound of firecrackers outside their house.

The bullet pierced the ceiling and broke a part of the floor before hitting a curtain and falling into a flower vase, the report said.

Knoke said she hopes that whoever fired the gun will be troubled by his or her conscience.

The police has been campaigning on its members and private gun owners not to fire their guns during the New Year to avoid injuries and deaths resulting from stray bullets as in the past.*PP

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Army operations
to focus in Negros

ILOILO CITY – Government troops in the Visayas will refocus its counter-insurgency operations from Cebu and Bohol Islands last year to Negros Island this year, an Army spokesman said.

Lt. Col. Erwin de Asis, public information officer of the Army's 3 rd Infantry Division (3ID), said Negros will be the main priority of the 3ID in its operations.

The 3ID covers Western and Central Visayas and includes the islands of Panay, Negros, Bohol, Cebu and Siquijor.

De Asis said the change of focus is based on their gains in campaigns against New People's Army rebels in Central Visayas .

The 3rd ID earlier said it aims to “clear” northern Cebu of its remaining NPA guerilla front by the end of the year and also a guerilla front in Bohol within the period.

Negros Islands accounts for half of the 12 NPA guerilla fronts in Central and Western Visayas , according to 3ID commander Maj. Gen. Jovenal Narcise in an earlier interview. Panay has four guerrilla fronts while Cebu and Bohol Islands have one each. The 3ID is will deploying two battalions (around 1,000 soldiers) in Negros , among the areas in the country where the NPA has a considerable presence.

Around Citizens' Armed Forces Geographical Unit (Cafgu) has also been deployed in Western and Central Visayas . These include four Cafgu companies in Negros Occidental, two companies in Bohol and a company in Cebu .

De Asis said the other areas will be considered a secondary priority next to Negros .

But the CPP and NPA in Panay Island belittled the troop deployments and the claims of success of the 3ID in its counter-insurgency campaign.

In an emailed statement marking its 39 th founding anniversary on December 26, the CPP's Panay Regional Committee said the CPP, NPA and underground organizations in Panay have grown in strength in the past year.

“Thousands upon thousands of Panayanons participated in the armed resistance and joined the NPA or the revolutionary mass organizations, having realized the need to topple the fascist regime,” said the statement signed by rebel leader Concha Araneta.

Araneta said membership in the in revolutionary mass organizations in the countryside increased by 47 percent while the NPA guerillas on the island nearly doubled, increasing by 85 percent. The CPP membership also grew by 20 percent, she said.

“Such expansion is unprecedented since the Second Rectification movement in 1994,” said Araneta.

Araneta said the government is failing in its objective to crush in priority regions in the country.

She said that the 3ID failed to seriously affect the rebel forces in Panay despite launching 10 brigade-size operations and around 100 battalion and company-size operations last year.

She also said that all they can claim as accomplishments are photo opportunities and empty boasts about abandoned camps of the NPA and many times the reactionary military was at the receiving end of sniping and ambushes, suffering casualties from NPA counter-offensives.

She also claimed that not one NPA red fighter was killed or wounded in these encounters and all its officers and men became more experienced in actual combat.*NPB

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