A cache ofillegal firearmswas intercepted inside a roll-on, roll-off vessel at the port of Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, by a team from the Intelligence Branch of the Negros Oriental Provincial Police Office, at about 4 p.m. yesterday.

The contraband, that included two KG9 submachine guns with three silencers, six long magazines for 9-mm caliber, and 17 newly-manufactured.45 calibre pistols with 37 magazines, were neatly packed in carbon paper to avoid detection by the x-ray machine, the police said.

Investigations show that the NOPPO Intelligence Branch, headed by Supt. Reynolds Andot, had received a report about a shipment of guns to Zamboanga from Negros Oriental.

NOPPO director Senior Supt. Edward Carranza dispatched a team, led by Insp. Ronoel Fungo, who waited for the arrival of the bus that contained the guns at the Dumaguete pier.

The police said the bus came from Bacolod, but the contraband had been brought by two to three persons on board the bus at its terminal in Calindagan Dumaguete.

The policemen searched the bus and found the firearms in seven bags, that were unpacked in the presence of Chief Supt. Samuel Mahusay Yordan, deputy regional director for Administration, who was at the provincial command in Camp Francisco Fernandez, Brgy. Agan-an in Sibulan, for an integrated transformation program activity, police records show.

Yordan said that if the items had not been intercepted, they could have gone to the wrong hands and usedby criminal elements, or even to politicians.

He said the police are under orders to dismantle private armed groups.

Carranza said it is possible that the illegal firearms are from Danao, Cebu, and he has directed the Provincial Intelligence Branch to conduct a thorough investigation.*JG

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