Free Republic

COMMUNIST rebels attacked government and other targets with impunity on Friday and Tuesday, destroying a cell site, burning buses and a cargo truck and putting a power plant under siege. Four Air Force soldiers were killed in the attack on the National Power Corp. Plant in Calaca town, Batangas province. While in Dumarao town, Capiz province, the guerrillas destroyed a cell site of the Globe Telecommunications firm. The guerrillas burned three buses in Canlaon City in two separate attacks Friday and Saturday. On Tuesday, guerrillas burned a cargo truck owned by a sugar planter in Silay City, Negros Occidental province....

Rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal reads a statementfrom his laptop computer during a clandestine pressconference Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2004 at the communist NewPeople's Army encampment in northern Philippines. NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY ENCAMPMENT, Philippines -- Wearing his trademark Mao cap and neck scarf, Gregorio Rosal appeared in a communist rebel jungle camp with the tools of his trade: an M-16 rifle, laptop computer, a pocket radio, mobile phones and a harmonica. For more than a decade, the frail Philippine rebel spokesman has built a reputation for public relations on behalf of the Marxist guerrillas, countering the military's portrayal of the fighters as...