MARIT STINUS-CABUGON
BOHOL province has been insurgency-free for almost a decade. However, last October 24, troops belonging to the 47th Infantry Battalion, Special Action Force and the 702nd Regional and Provincial Mobile Force Companies engaged in a firefight with an armed group in Barangay Rizal, Batuan, a timberland area. Both army and police refrained from publicly acknowledging that the four armed persons with whom they exchanged fire were members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA). But if not the NPA, then who? The Abu Sayyaf Group like in 2017? A criminal syndicate? Persons hiding from the law? Not impossible, as the NPA in Bohol has tried to recruit persons with pending arrest warrants.