Gunmen kill nine police, villagers in central Philippines
About 20 gunmen sprayed the victims’ truck with automatic weapon fire before dawn in the foothills of Mount Kanlaon in Negros Occidental province, firing nearly 300 rounds of ammunition.
Gunmen hiding in a sugarcane field ambushed a truckload of policemen and village guards who had helped secure a village dance festival, killing nine and wounding two others Sunday in the central Philippines, officials said.
About 20 gunmen sprayed the victims’ truck with automatic weapon fire before dawn in the foothills of Mount Kanlaon in Negros Occidental province, firing nearly 300 rounds of ammunition. One police officer was among those killed, and two others were wounded, provincial police Chief Celestino Guara said.
Most of the other victims were village guards who had helped protect the village festival and were travelling back to a police station.
“Our policemen managed to return fire but there were just too many gunmen firing away,” Guara said by mobile phone from the scene of the attack.
Road checkpoints were immediately set up and government troops launched a manhunt for the attackers, who fled toward a forest in Negros Occidental, a poor, sugar-producing province about 470 kilometres southeast of Manila.
Police said the attackers may have been communist New People’s Army guerrillas. “Before withdrawing, the gunmen yelled, ‘Long live the New People’s Army’”, Guara said.
