The Philippine Territory

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE - 2:45 p.m.) Air Force attack helicopters pounded suspected lairs of the New People’s Army in Sagada, Mt. Province on Friday in support of a ground assault by government forces, police said.

“Yes, the airstrike was being conducted by two MG520” choppers, Superintendent Davy Vicente Limmong, spokesman of the Cordiller regional police office, said.

He would not say which areas in the town, a popular tourist destination, were being bombed by the Air Force 1st Division’s Strike Wing but a Sagada resident said the choppers had been "dropping bombs and spraying bullets in the watershed close to the villages" as "villagers watched helplessly in terror."

The resident said there were two strikes Friday, at 8 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., and that soldiers had camped at the Aguid elementary school.

The air strikes came after Thursday’s ambush by NPA guerrillas of a convoy of policemen on the boundary of Barangay Aguid, Sagada and Barangay Mainit, Bontoc.
Two policemen were wounded in the incident.

Sagada was declared a peace zone supposed to be off limits to armed members of warring forces several years ago.

On June 28, rebels also ambushed a group of police trainees, killing one policeman and wounding almost a dozen.

The NPA said they did not target the trainees but their armed escorts. The rebels said they had seized more than a dozen weapons during the incident.
Source: http://www.interaksyon.com/article/69712/air-force-mounts-rocket-strikes-vs-npa-in-sagada