BAUKO, Mountain Province – A 25-year old policeman was killed after government troops engaged more than twenty members of the New Peoples Army (NPA) in a 15-minute running gun battle at sitio Malabagan, Bagnen proper, here, Friday morning.
Police Col. Mark Pespes, battalion commander of the Regional Public Safety Battalion of the Police Regional Office (PRO) in the Cordillera, identified the fatality as Patrolman Wilfredo Padawil, a native of Sagada, Mountain Province and a member of the Mountain province Provincial Manoeuvre Company.
The police official claimed that the law enforcers were performing security operations in the area to attend to reports of alleged illegal logging and destructive activities that tend to pollute the major river systems in the place when they chanced upon the rebles who were also in the area that resulted to the running gun battle.
“We were able to deploy the needed augmentation force that caused the enemy to retreat and fled towards the mountainous area of Tadian but we are still conducting the needed hot pursuit operations to go after those who caused the atrocities to our personnel in the area,” Pespes stressed.
The police official claimed that the area of the gun battle was already cleared by responding government troops while a blockade is now in place to make sure that the fleeing rebels will not be able to go out of the province.
He claimed that no casualty was reported on the enemy side although they suspect that there were some injured communist rebels who were brought with them by their fleeing colleagues as evidenced by the blood stains on the escape route of the rebels.
Pespes called on the people of Mountain Province to continue providing law enforcers with the needed information on the presence of communist rebels in their communities so that appropriate operations could be done to effect their arrest and for them to be able to be brought back to the folds of mainstream society.
Earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte dissolved the government peace panel which had been constantly negotiating with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and declared the all-out war against the insurgents due to their lack of sincerity in the conduct of the peace talks.
By HENT
