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| Four more troopers killed in extended AFP operations in AbraAgustin Begnalen Command
New People's Army - Abra
Diego Wadagan
ABC Spokesperson
April 10, 2008
Four soldiers of the 52nd Reconnaissance Coy under the 5th Infantry Division and an NPA guerrilla were killed in an encounter on April 5 in Barangay Tubtuba, Abra.
The lone casualty of the NPA was Ka Atong, a member of the Salegseg tribe in Kalinga. The encounter is the latest in a series of clashes between the AFP and NPA as the military's vicious operations entered its second month. Earlier on March 21, five troopers were killed in an ambush, and on March 25, two more were killed and two others wounded.
Daily from March 23 to 27, two OV-10 bomber planes dropped 250-pound bombs and strafed the forested area and mountains along the boundary of Tubo and Besao and the peripheries of the communities of Sityo Pananuman and Tubtuba. Since March 29, the AFP bombarded the area from morning till night with 105mm Howitzer shells and 81mm mortar fire from Pananuman. An OV-10 bomb costs around P100,000 each, a Howitzer bomb around P8,500, and a mortar bomb around P5,000. The military sustained its bombing operations even at night, traumatizing the villagers and disrupting their livelihood. The people were forced to stop tending their rice fields, swidden farms, and grazing animals.
In pursuing the US-Arroyo regime's ruthless Oplan Bantay Laya counter-insurgency war, the military is riding roughshod over the people rights. It seeks to deprive the NPA of the people's support by "draining the pond to catch the fish." It will go the extent of wasting millions of pesos in ammunition, disrupting the people's agricultural production and further reducing the people to poverty and hunger, in the vain hope of taking down the NPA along in the process.
This will only serve to further embitter the people in the face of the current rice crisis. The people are now vehemently demanding the pullout of military troops in the area so that they can return to their normal lives.
The Agustin Begnalen Command vows to bleed the fascist AFP at each and every step of their incursions. #
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