BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – A three-hour firefight that turned into a running gunbattle between government troops and Communist rebels in an upland community in the province’s south left at least two rebels and two children dead but police and the Army have yet to issue their official accounts as this report goes to press.
Major Randy Babotr told DNX this morning, 6 October 2022, that a rebel was found dead after the first clash.
Babor, a deputy chief of the local police, said the discovery of the body was reported to them by the Army.
However, around 11am, a source of DNX in Himamaylan, a city about 60 kilometers south of here, reported two bodies of suspected rebels were found in the bivouac of the New People’s Army in a woody part of Sig-ang, a community also called here as a sitio or sub village in Carabalan.
Carabalan is a barangay or village once reported as an influenced area by the rebels where 17 soldiers were killed in a daylight ambush by the New People’s Army 22 years ago.
The same sources told DNX two children were found dead in Sig-ang, the first sitio where the soldiers, acting on tips by locals raided the NPA bivouac.
The guerrillas first held a defensive action but eventually fled, triggering a running gunbattle that, as of early this afternoon, reached the neighboring sitio of Marcelo.
The sources cannot provide details yet where the two children were found dead.
Brigadier General Innocencio Pasaporte told DNX he has not yet received any update from soldiers of the 94th Battalion who clashed with the rebels.
Babor said he has not yet received any update also from the Army.
