Town police chief killed by landmine blast in Isabela ambush

A day after President Benigno Aquino III made his first presidential visit to Region 2, a municipal chief of police in Isabela province was killed while six others were hurt in an ambush staged by suspected New People's Army (NPA) rebels on Friday. The rebels reportedly used a landmine and heavy firearms to waylay a police team led by Benito Soliven municipal police chief Senior Inspector Alfonso Derraco. Derraco succumbed to shrapnel and bullet wounds, while six other officers were seriously hurt, in the NPA ambush reportedly led by a certain Melecio Casisola alias Jose or Milis. The six wounded law enforcers were identified as SPO2 Rodolfo Marine, SPO2 Danilo Languido, PO3 Rogenito Sotelo, PO2 Nap Dagman, PO1 Alex Abalos and a certain Sgt. Ramos of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP). A radio report said Derraco and his men had just finished responding to a robbery incident when an estimated 70-strong NPA force assaulted them in Barangay Danipa in Benito Soliven town at around 8:30 a.m. Benito Soliven is a fourth-class upland municipality in Isabela’s Sierra Madre mountains with a population of just over 25,000 people based on the 2007 census. "We are still gathering additional information on what really happened in the area," said Chief Inspector Roberto Bucad, information officer of the Isabela police office, adding that reports reaching his office are still sketchy. Col. Loreto Mangundayao, chief of Civil Military Operations of the Army’s 5th Division based in Gamu, Isabela, disclosed in a text message to GMANews.TV that a landmine was probably used in the ambush. The incident happened a day after President Benigno “Noynoy" Aquino III visited the region to visit the wake of three of the seven Army troopers killed in an ambush also by suspected NPA rebels in an adjacent province. The seven members of the Army’s 52nd Division Reconnaissance Company were killed exactly a week earlier in Barangay Samoki in Bontoc town, Mountain Province – a neighboring province of Isabela to the west. (See: NPA ambushes Army troops; 7 soldiers killed) —Mark Merueñas and Flor Taguinod/JMA/JV, GMANews.TV