Hundreds of Philippine police and troops, backed by rocket-firing aircraft, clashed yesterday with about 100 communist guerrillas who took cover in a southern village after raiding a prison complex over the weekend, officials said.
Scores of residents of Casilac village, where the New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas put up resistance, were caught in the middle of the gunbattle, regional police chief Andres Caro told reporters.
No immediate reports of casualties or other details were available, he said.
Many of the rebels, including locally prominent leader Leonardo Pitao, also known as Commander Parago, were involved in a daring attack on the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in Davao del Norte province on Sunday in which the guerrillas seized more than 100 rifles, shotguns and pistols, he said.
Government forces found the attackers early yesterday in a hinterland area near Davao del Norte's Casilac village, about 900km southeast of Manila, sparking the clash, Caro said.
The communist guerrillas, who have waged a 38-year-old insurgency, described the prison attack as among their most successful in recent years because of the large arms haul. They also urged rebel units to seize more weapons for new recruits.
Caro said criminal complaints have been filed against Pitao and other NPA leaders for the attack. Prison officials also were being investigated because they failed to secure the prison complex, which houses nearly 4,000 convicts, despite police warnings of an impending rebel attack.
Police intelligence officials told several provincial security officials, including those responsible for the Davao prison, that communist guerrillas have recently bought at least 28 sets of army uniforms, an indication of a planned attack. The prison officials did not take any step to prevent the attack, Caro said.
Communist rebels have disguised themselves as policemen or soldiers in several attacks.
On Sunday, about 30 to 40 guerrillas wearing uniforms of a regional counterterrorism unit managed to approach prison guards then barged into the jail complex, Caro said.
The attack prompted police to declare a full alert in the agricultural province, where the insurgents are active.
It came despite recent military assurances that government forces were on track in their campaign to cut the 7,000-member guerrilla force in half by 2010.
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