6 Army troops hurt in Sorsogon ambush

Six Army enlisted personnel were hurt when their vehicle was fired at by suspected communist rebels in Sorsogon province, a regional military spokesperson said Thursday. In a text message sent to reporters, Maj. Harold Cabunoc of the Army's 9th Infantry Division said that about 11 a.m., elements of the 903rd Brigade on board a military truck were ambushed by six New People's Army (NPA) rebels in the vicinity of Montecarmelo village in Castilla town. At the time of the ambush, the troops were on their way to the brigade encounters after a tree-planting activity in the town. Five of the soldiers were hurt when their vehicle crashed at a bushy ravine near the roadside while evading passenger tricycles nearby. A sixth soldier was hit by enemy fire. Cabunoc said the soldiers were able to engage the enemy in a firefight, although it could not be determined if the rebels suffered any casualties. He added that tt was the fourth ambuscade perpetrated by the rebels in Sorsogon, which came as the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, will celebrate its 41st founding anniversary on March 29. On Monday, the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) announced it was abandoning the idea of forging peace with the Arroyo administration, which it described as a "lameduck regime." [See: NDFP: No more peace talks with Arroyo admin] "The NDFP Negotiating Panel has no interest in negotiating with a lameduck regime with a lifespan of less than three months, especially because this regime continues to daydream about destroying the revolutionary mass movement of the Filipino people with brute military force and cheap psywar tricks that include fake localized peace talks with its own military troops and distribution of doleouts to them," said Fidel Agcaoili, chairman of the NDFP’s human rights committee. Both the NDFP and the government had been exerting efforts to revive the peace negotiations, which remain been stalled since August 2004. In June 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the military and police to crush the communist insurgency by the time she ends her term in June this year. - RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV