AFP bares communist sabotage-plot for Western Visayas
An elaborate sabotage plan is reportedly underway with Western Visayas as principal target. The perpetrators, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) here said, are the communist-terrorists New People's Army (NPA). The NPAs, whatever is left of them, is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) – National Democratic Front (NDF).
Execution, the reports continued, has officially began with the initial attack made Wednesday evening at the United Philippine Drilling Company in Negros Occidental. A parallel attack was also slated in a Globe telecommunications tower in Lambunao, Iloilo yet foiled by Army forces in the area.
The Negros Occidental incident saw about twenty armed NPAs with the security guard disarmed and robbed of personal belongings. The drilling equipment was also destroyed. It was not immediately clear how much damage was incurred in the incident.
Captain Lowen Gil Marquez, commanding officer of the AFP's 3rd Civil Relations Unit, confirmed the report in a news statement sent to The News Today (TNT).
The twin attacks were purportedly part of the grand design to sow terror and destabilization before Monday's Presidential State of the Nation Address.
"The CPP-NPA-NDF through its legal front organizations planned the destabilization in order to create an atmosphere of hatred," the AFP news release went while adding that the communist-terrorist groups wanted to sow discord in an otherwise peaceful, orderly and progressive community.
"The Armed Forces of the Philippines, other Law Enforcement Agencies and other government agencies are here as one team to protect and serve the Filipino people....we are ready to face them in order maintain peace and harmony and not discord and chaos as they want it," Captain Marquez ended.