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Army braces for NPA attacks vs telecom towers

By CHARLIE C. LAGASCA

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – The Army is bracing for possible attacks by the traditionally Maoist New People’s Army (NPA) on several communication facilities in Cagayan Valley , among them a major facility of a multi-national telecommunication company.

“We are not taking chances here as well as in other vital facilities in our areas. (The rebels) would resort to these actions just to make their dwindling presence felt under the new administration,” said Colonel Loreto Magundayao, chief of the civil-military relations battalion of the Isabela-based Army’s 5th Infantry Division (ID).

The Army said that it has already deployed a number of its men as augmentation security force for the Globe facility in Barangay Bansing here, reportedly one of the targets of the NPA attacks to make its presence felt under the Aquino administration.

Once the NPA succeed in sabotaging said facility, Magundayao said that communication links among Globe subscribers here, in Quirino and parts of southern Isabela and central Cordillera would be totally cut off.

In fact, the Army said that the NPA has already started its terrorist plans with the recent daylight ambush slay of seven government soldiers while on their way to an outreach mission in Mt. Province.

This was followed a week later by another NPA-staged ambush on police personnel while on their way to respond to reports of a robbery in progress in remote village in Isabela’s Benito Soliven town, wherein a police major was killed in said ambush.

The Army said that the rebels also resort to burning or destroying privately-owned heavy equipment in the countryside like what they did to the trucks and bulldozers of the Monte Alto logging firm in Echague town, also in Isabela last week.

“This is a ploy by the rebels to show that they are supposedly still a force to reckon with and supposedly to gain equal footing with the government, especially in connection with the possible resumption of peace talks between the government and their ranks,” the Army said.

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