TACLOBAN CITY – With more bodies being retrieved near the site of an encounter between government troops and communist guerrillas in Catbalogan City, Army 8th Infantry Division commander Major Gen. Edgardo de Leon said they have deployed more assets and personnel to ramp up the search and retrieval operations following the drifting pattern of the current.
"Humingi na rin kami ng tulong sa Samar Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office para matulungan ang Tarangnan Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office. This way, mas mapapabilis and search and retrieval natin at magkarelyebo 'yung mga tao na involved sa operations (We have asked the Samar Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office to assist the Tarangnan Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office. Search and retrieval operations would go faster this way and rescuers would get respite)," De Leon said.
Four days after the gunbattle between the Armed Forced of the Philippines (AFP)-Special Operations Unit and the New People’s Army (NPA), more bodies were found floating near the islet of Libucan Gute, Tarangnan, Samar.
The latest remains were reportedly found by fishermen off the coast of Libucan Daku, also in Tarangnan, Thursday night, Aug. 25.
One of the fatalities, according to a resident of adjacent bigger Island Libucan Daku, was found by residents from Barangay Cagutsan, which was reported to barangay officials.
The body belonged to a male, according to a composite search and retrieval operations team from Philippine Coast Guard, Philippine National Police (PNP), PNP-Scene-of-the-Crime Operatives (SOCO), and AFP Joint Task Force Storm.
De Leon thanked residents, fishermen, and local officials for reporting the incidents on social media.
"As of this time, we got another information through social media that two more floating human remains were sighted and I am sending a retrieval team to check. If that is true, then we would have accounted for four NPA terrorists dead in an off-shore encounter." De Leon added.
Last Tuesday, the remains of an unidentified woman and debris of a wrecked boat were also found afloat 1.5-kilometers from the shoreline of Catbalogan City's nearby municipality.
The debris and the human remains were believed to had drifted and scattered by strong current from the boat explosion last Monday, Aug. 22, 2.6 kilometers northeast of the shoreline of Catbalogan.
SOCO said that it will take some time to establish the identities of remains as the samples collected for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing would require a match from a relative.
As of posting time, no relatives have shown up to claim relationship with any of the suspected NPA terrorists.