ZAMBOANGA CITY, 3 September 2003 — Communist rebels killed a police officer and set construction equipment afire at a quarry site in separate attacks in the northern and southern Philippines yesterday, the military said. Field reports reaching the military’s Southern Command headquarters here in Zamboanga City said about 70 guerrillas of the New People’s Army (NPA) swooped down on the Sebastian Construction Co. in Compostela Valley in eastern Mindanao burned equipment after its owners failed to pay “revolutionary taxes.” The rebels, divided into two groups, attacked the firm in the village of Bantacan and its quarrying site in San Roque village, both in New Bataan town, said Col. Fredesvindo Covarrubias, chief of the military’s 4th Civil Relations Group. Covarrubias said the destroyed equipment, costing about 40 million pesos ($727,272) included cement mixers, trucks and bulldozers. In the province of Camarines Norte in the northern Philippines, NPA guerrillas raided two police outposts, killing one officer and wounding two other officers, another military report said.
