A POLICE lieutenant and an Army soldier were killed in separate clashes with communist New People’s Army rebels in Northern Samar on Monday and Saturday.
The slain policeman was identified as Lt. Kenneth Tad-awan, detailed with the 801st Maneuver Company, Regional Mobile Force Battalion 8 of the PNP.
Tad-awan and his fellow policemen were conducting preventive patrol at around 6:40 a.m. when they encountered an undetermined number of NPA rebels in Barangay Look in Lapinig town. Tad-awan died in the firefight.
Policemen seized an NPA camp and several improvised explosive devices during a clearing operation.
Bloodstains were found in rebel positions, indicating some of them were injured or may have died in the fighting.
Army Private First Class John Jeffry Dabalos, of the Army’s 9th Infantry Battalion, died in another firefight with NPA rebels in Silvino Lobos town last Saturday.
The Army’s 8th Infantry Division based in Calbayog City in Samar said Dabalos died as he and other soldiers from the 19th IB assaulted an NPA camp in Barangay Senonogan de Tubang.
Layug said Dabalos, 22, is single but is the sole breadwinner of his family. He has six siblings and his mother is battling stage 3 cervical cancer while his father is still recuperating from a recent surgery.
Dabalos was posthumously awarded with a Military Merit Medal with Bronze Spearhead for gallantry in combat and promoted to the higher rank of corporal during rites in Calbayog City on Monday.
