‘NPA was planning attack on cops'

At that time, Lirazan said, the police outpost was manned only by police team with most of their colleagues out of the detachment.

He recalled that the NPA entered the hacienda compound at about 11 p.m. Wednesday and occupied the place for several hours, taking 25 farm workers and their children, as well as four security guards, as hostages.

The Kabankalan police and 6 th RPSB troopers, who accompanied firefighters of the Bureau of Fired and Protection, entered the hacienda owned by the family of the late Mayor Pablo Sola at noon of the next day, when the rebels had already withdrawn from the area police records show.

Although the Philippine Army soldiers did not respond to the NPA atrocities, Col. Jon Aying, 303rd Infantry Brigade commander said his troops were in the vicinity tracking the movement of the fleeing rebels.

Police investigation showed that the rebel suspects, five of them women, torched the warehouse and the tractor of Hacienda Isabel owned by the Sola family, beheaded some of the sheep, and disarmed the four security guards of three shotguns and a .38 caliber revolver.

However, the rebels left the hostages unharmed.

Aying said they are very “cautious” about the modus operandi of the rebels in ambushing government troopers responding to NPA atrocities.

In May last year, five Army soldiers, who were responding to arson activities of the NPA in Brgy. Camindanga, SipalayCity, were killed in an ambush staged by rebels. They also lost five high-powered firearms to the NPA.