NPA rebels spring 7 comrades from Lucena jail

10/27/2008

New People’s Army (NPA) rebels disguised as drug enforcement officials infiltrated a prison in Lucena province, south of the capital Manila, overpowered the guards and freed seven of their comrades being held for murder.

According to Lucena provincial police chief Fidel Posadas, the communist rebels had claimed to be handing a prisoner in to the facility but once inside the gates of the jail, they overpowered the guards and sprang seven comrades whom they called “political detainees.”

Posadas said the fleeing rebels threw grenades and fired at police, wounding two of them and two other civilians.

The police official said the jailbreak was successfully done due to its guards failure to follow proper procedures, particularly in allowing the men inside without first verifying their identities.

“The guards did not even ask which judge ordered the turnover of prisoners. So the men entered the jail freely,” he said.

The provincial warden and 25 other jail guards were not at the facility and apparently were attending a seminar in Manila, Posadas said.

“The governor ordered the provincial warden and the deputy warden relieved while the investigation is ongoing,” he said.

The NPA has recently raised attacks on government installations and security forces even as the military and police have intensified offensive operations against the rebel group in abeyance to a directive issued out by President Arroyo two years ago to stamp out the almost four-decades old insurgency before she steps down in 2010.

On Friday, NPA guerrillas ambushed Army troops in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, killing six soldiers and wounding two others.

The military said a 14-member Army unit was going up the mountainous village of Manurigao, in New Bataan town around 1 p.m. when NPA gunmen set off landmines that were buried in the soldiers’ path and started shooting at them. The soldiers fought back and a gun battle that lasted for 30 minutes ensued.

Among the killed six government troops was an officer who had been assigned to liaise with local officials ahead of a planned mission next month by military doctors on the impoverished village.

The NPA, the armed guerrilla wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines which presently has about 5,000 members, has been waging a Maoist-style rebellion since 1969 in one of Asia’s longest running insurgencies. AFP

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