Soldiers shot dead a long wanted high official of the New People’s Army and his female aide in a brief clash in Barangay Laconon in T’boli town in South Cotabato on Thursday morning, April 9.
Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, and Brig. Gen. Michael Santos, commander of the 603rd Infantry Brigade, separately told reporters at noon Thursday that the NPA leader Anthony Narvasa, secretary of the NPA’s Far South Mindanao Region operating in Central Mindanao, and his assistant, Rosa Kian, died instantly from multiple bullet wounds sustained in the encounter.
The gunfight erupted when Narvasa and his companions opened fire at soldiers from a unit of the 603rd Infantry Brigade that Santos dispatched to Barangay Laconon, a hinterland area in T’boli, to check on reports by villagers about their presence in the area, collecting money and rice from them at gunpoint.
Narvasa was wanted for high-profile criminal cases, including multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, arson, armed robbery, extortion and large-scale trafficking of shabu and marijuana, pending in courts in different towns in South Cotabato and in Koronadal City, the capital of the province.
Ethnic T’boli tribal leaders and local executives had told reporters that companions of the slain Narvasa and Kian scampered away, carrying three wounded guerillas, when they sensed that more soldiers were closing in.
Santos said they are grateful to the ethnic T’boli tribal leaders who informed them about the presence of Narvasa and his followers in a hinterland in Barangay Laconon, enabling them to launch the anti-NPA maneuver that resulted in an encounter that left him and Kian dead and forced their comrades to retreat towards an unpopulated forest a few kilometers away.
Santos said soldiers found scattered around the cadavers of Narvasa and Kian five M16 assault rifles, two improvised rifles that can fire steel pellets using butane gas, hundreds of rifle ammunition, 40 millimeter grenade projectiles and components for improvised explosive devices. (April 9, 2026)