The New People’s Army-Northern Samar ambushed on 3 April a combined armed contingent of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police in San Miguel village, Las Navas town of Nothern Samar. At least one police officer was killed, while five other police and military officers were wounded.
The ambushed combat forces belonged to the PNP 1st Mobile Force Company, based in Catubig town and the AFP 20th Infantry Battalion, based in Las Navas.
Amado Pesante, Spokesperson of the NPA-Nothern Samar Rodante Urtal Comand, said the tactical offensive was in response to the complaints made by the villagers of San Miguel and Osang “against the harassment, midnight interrogations, encampment within public utilities including the school, chapel, and the multipurpose hall, among other rights violations, perpetrated by elements of the AFP and PNP in the area.”
Complaining of their defeat, PNP Eastern Visayas Director Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac said the NPA utilized command-detonated explosives during the ambush, which violated international humanitarian law.
Pesante responded, “the spirit of international humanitarian law is to prevent civilian casualties in the conduct of war. What the Ottawa Treaty prohibits are landmines that are contact-detonated or those that cannot distinguish unarmed civilians from their armed targets. The San Miguel offensive which used CDX shows that the attack was targeted only to operating soldiers and police who are legitimate targets in war.”
He continued, “Command-detonated explosives are way more controlled than the AFP-PNP’s terrorist bombings that blow out of proportions, killing and traumatizing a wide range of the population with no regard whatsoever if those hit are civilians or combatants.”
Duterte’s security forces, he said, “Pretends to be champions of international humanitarian law, even as they commit the worst forms of violations, including the killing of the two children Andrei Mercado, 12, and Leandro Alivio, 13, in Roxas village, in Catubig on 8 February… They are the real terrorists, hated and despised by the people for their abuses, lies, and fascist attacks against civilian communities.”
Marco Valbuena, Chief Information Officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines, also explained, “The NPA’s use of CDEx is in line with the Ottawa Treaty which bans only those land mines ‘designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person’.”
He added, “In contrast, the NPA’s CDEx are exploded only on command by an assigned personnel in battles and are precisely aimed at armed adversaries.”