It was a deadly start for 2011 with nine persons losing their lives in violent incidents in Negros Occidental and in Bacolod City that included a son killing his father, a nephew who stabbed his uncle, and a husband who killed his wife, police records showed yesterday.

But Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office Operations Branch Chief, Supt. Jefferson Descallar, said there were no reports of indiscriminate firing by lawmen or civilians in Negros Occidental.

Police records showed that a teenager stabbed his father to death on Jan. 1 in Cauayan. He was apparently fed up by his abuses.

A Five Star firecracker blasted the left eye of a 47-year-old resident of Barangay Pahanocoy, Bacolod City, as he was ushering in the New Year.

He was one of 31 firecracker victims rushed to the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital in Bacolod during the holidays, Dr. Juan Del Rio said yesterday.

The 47-year-old, whose name is being withheld, was holding the Five Star firecracker when it went off rupturing his globe, or left eyeball, the doctor said.

It looks like government efforts at peace talks with the Communist rebels is not stopping the New People’s Army from creating more fighting units on Negros Island.

Leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its fighting arm, the NPA, at a press conference somewhere in Negros Island late last week  to mark the 42nd founding anniversary of the CPP, said they are expanding   their controlled and influenced areas in the island to bring about a stalemate with government forces in five years.