Suspected New People's Army rebels burned down a school building with five precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines in a remote village in Miag-ao town in Iloilo Saturday afternoon, according to a police official.
No one was injured in the attack by around 20 unidentified and heavily armed persons at the Home Economics building of the Cadoldolan Elementary School at around 3:30 p.m., said Senior Supt. Renato Gumban, Iloilo police director, in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Cadoldolan is a hinterland village 20 km from the town proper of Miag-ao, which is 42 km south of Iloilo City.
Gumban said the incident was reported early Saturday evening by the two police escorts who managed to return to the Miag-ao police station.
The NPA has not issued a statement owning up to or denying the attack as of Saturday evening.
Citing initial reports of the two police escorts, Gumban said the PCOS machines were delivered Saturday morning and were being guarded by the two policemen and members of the board of election inspectors before the attack.
The policemen and teachers withdrew from the school, leaving the counting machines but taking the PCOS compact flash disks with them when they were informed that several armed persons were approaching the school.
"There was no firefight because our policemen decided to withdraw because of the overwhelming armed force," Gumban said.
Troops under the Army's 82nd Infantry Battalion have been deployed to run after the armed persons responsible for the attack.
Lawyer Elizabeth Doronila, Iloilo election supervisor, said reserved PCOS machines can be sent to the area and the elections could still be held because the compact flash (CF) disks were retrieved by the BEI members before the machines were burned.
The CF disk contains data on the assigned PCOS machine unique to a particular precinct which enables the machine to process the ballots and tabulate the results.
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