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Communist guerrillas are planning to revive an
assassination campaign in Metro Manila, the country’s capital
region, that claimed the lives of scores of soldiers and police in
the 1980s, a senior military official said Wednesday.
The New People’s Army (NPA)
would unleash its hit squads, or “sparrow units,” around when
President Gloria Arroyo delivers her annual State of the Nation
Address, or SONA, at the House of Representatives in Quezon City, a
part of Metro Manila, on Monday, Manila military commander
Major-General Arsenio Arugay said.
The New People’s Army is the
military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
“They are going to conduct
sparrow operations from now or maybe after the SONA,” he told
reporters.
“We have [intelligence reports]
that they already have elements here [Metro Manila],” Arugay
added.
More than 100 soldiers, policemen
and civilians accused of spying for the government were killed in
the country in the late 1980s as New People’s Army gunmen sought
to incite an urban insurrection.
The rebels stopped the campaign
and recalled their cadres to the rural areas after the Maoist
movement purged its leadership.
The military said the New
People’s Army is down to about 5,000 from a peak of more than
26,000 in 1987. But hundreds of troops have been deployed on the
southern island of Mindanao amid an upsurge in guerrilla attacks
there.
Arugay said communist assassins
“are threats to the peace and order particularly on the personal
safety of soldiers, policemen and some government functionaries.”
--AFP
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