Gunmen kill 9 police & villagers in Philippines

About 20 gunmen raked the victims' truck with automatic weapon fire before dawn in the foothills of Mount Kanlaon in Negros Occidental province, firing nearly 300 rounds. One officer was among those killed and two were wounded, provincial police chief Celestino Guara said.

Eight other people, mostly village guards, were killed, including two women, who hitched a ride on the truck. Seven other villagers were wounded. They had joined the police in helping protect the festival late Saturday and were traveling back to a police station when they were attacked, police said.

“Our policemen managed to return fire but there were just too many gunmen firing away,” Guara said by phone from the scene.

Road checkpoints were set up and government troops launched a hunt for the attackers in Negros Occidental, a poor, sugar-producing province about 470 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of Manila.

Police said the attackers may have been communist New People's Army guerrillas. “Before withdrawing, the gunmen yelled, 'Long live the New People's Army,'” Guara said.

One of the three police officers in the truck had received death threats over a land dispute, and his adversaries may have enlisted the help of the Maoist guerrillas, Guara said.

However, army brigade commander Col. Oscar Lactao said the attackers may have been members of an illegal logging group. A forest ranger was killed by suspected illegal loggers in the area last year, he said.

The killings are the latest in a flurry of gun violence that has revived calls for tighter gun controls. The country has long grappled with communist and Muslim insurgencies, crime, and armed groups controlled by politicians, warlords and powerful families.

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