Philippine police: Gunmen kill 9 people who occupied farm

BACOLOD, Philippines (AP) — Gunmen killed nine members of a farmers' group who occupied part of a privately owned sugarcane plantation in a central Philippine province, police said Sunday.

The victims were resting in a hut Saturday night when about 10 gunmen opened fire, police said. At least four farmers survived the attack at the plantation in Sagay city in Negros Occidental province, which has a history of bloody land feuds.

"There are groups fighting over that land," Sagay police Chief Inspector Roberto Mansueto said.

At least two of the victims may have fired back at the attackers because spent pistol and shotgun casings were found in the area, Mansueto said.

"Witnesses say they heard only a few initial shots. Apparently the victims were just being threatened," Mansueto told reporters. "But later there seemed to have been an exchange of fire."

The National Federation of Sugar Workers condemned the killings of its members, who included four women and two minors. The group said the victims were forced to plant vegetables and root crops to feed their families on idle land that's covered by the government's land reform program but remained undistributed to poor farmers.

Two other peasant leaders belonging to the federation were killed in Sagay city last December and in February this year by suspected pro-government forces, the group said. It said that about 45 farmers asserting their land rights have been killed on Negros island under President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.

Instead of offering an effective land reform program, Duterte's government "red baits those who assert their rights to the land," the group said, referring to pronouncements by civilian and military officials linking protesting farmers to communist guerrillas.

There was no immediate government reaction. Regional police chief Superintendent John Bulalacao condemned Saturday's attack and said everything was being done to ensure the rapid arrest of the killers.

In September 1985, government forces opened fire on protesters, many of them farmers, in Negros Occidental province as they were commemorating the 1972 declaration of martial law by then-President Ferdinand Marcos. Several died in an event that left-wing activists still mark each year.