The 79th Infantry Battalion discovered a safehouse and recovered “war materials” believed to be owned by remnants of the dismantled Northern Negros Front of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the hinterlands of Cadiz City, Negros Occidental, on Tuesday, July 16, a Philippine Army report said Wednesday.
The NPA, on the other hand, claimed the Army’s alleged discovery of a rebel camp was a “big joke”, what actually happened were military raids on homes of farmworkers suspected of having ties or sympathetic to the revolutionary movement.
The 79IB said that their continuous military operations resulted to the discovery of the safehouse.
It was the result of a tip from vigilant residents regarding the presence of several armed men in the area conducting extortion activities in nearby barangays and recovery efforts of their former mass base, the 79th IB said.
Recovered from the safehouse were a magazine and 30 live ammunition for an M-16 rifle, hammocks, cellphones, back packs, SIM cards, flash drives, a flashlight, utility ropes, medical paraphernalia, personal belongings, and subversive documents, the Army said.
Meanwhile, Ka Cecil Estrella, spokesperson of the Roselyn Pelle Command of the NPA’s Northern Negros Guerilla Front, in a press statement Thursday denied the 79th IB report.
The alleged encampment is not a hinterland village but a populated community of farm workers within Hacienda Flores in Barangay Luna, Estrella said.
“What actually happened was a military raid on the homes of farm workers whom the 79IB suspected of having ties to the revolutionary movement or sympathetic to the NPA”, he added.
The “war materials and subversive documents” allegedly recovered are nothing but an array of mainly personal belongings and some papers and ammunition that can easily be tampered and manufactured, Estrella said.*