Three members of the New People’s Army and a combatant of the Army’s 37th Infantry Battalion were killed in a gunfight in Barangay Datu Ito Andong in Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat before dawn Thursday, June 19, 2025.
Leaders of the indigenous groups and local executives in Kalamansig told reporters on Friday, June 20, that the hostilities erupted when the NPAs opened fire at a team from the 37th IB, dispatched to check on reports about their presence in a secluded area in Barangay Datu Ito Andong, collecting rice and money from villagers at gunpoint.
Local officials, among them members of the multi-sector Kalamansig Municipal Peace and Order Council, said two of the rebels killed in the encounter, Brix Alison and Tomas Sales are ranking officials of the NPA’s self-styled Sub-Regional Committee-Daguma Area and the Regional Sentro de Gravidad, whose leaders, including the two of them, are wanted for high-profile criminal cases pending in different courts in Central Mindanao.
The third fatality, Myca Bunsing, is an NPA platoon medic, according to leaders of the indigenous tribes in Barangay Datu Ito Andong and in nearby tribal enclaves in Kalamansig.
Lt. Col. Christopherson Capuyan, commanding officer of the 37th IB, said one of his subordinates, Corporal Jay-Ar Baay, also died from bullet wounds he sustained as they traded shots with the NPAs in a hinterland area in Barangay Datu Ito Andong.
Capuyan’s immediate superior, Brig. Gen. Michael Santos of the 603rd Infantry Brigade and the commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, Major Donald Gumiran, had separately said that soldiers found four M16 assault rifles and improvised explosive devices beside the cadavers of the three NPAs.
Santos and Gumiran had both expressed gratitude to the residents of Kalamansig, local executives and the traditional leaders of the Moro and non-Moro indigenous communities in the municipality for helping units of the 603rd Infantry Brigade monitor the movements in their domains of the few remaining members of the now markedly weakened NPA.
Photo show personnel of the 6th ID facilitating the transport of the remains of the slain Baay to his homeplace, Barangay Pisan in Kabacan, Cotabato where he is to be buried by his family. (JFU, June 20, 2025, Cotabato City)
