Karapatan reports that:

‘’On April 20, 2017, at around 5:30am, at least 42 soldiers from the 3rd Scout Ranger unit and 903rd Brigade of the Philippine Army conducted military operations. In the process, they ‘fired at four houses of farmers in Sitio Lubugan, Barangay Panan-awan, Kawayan, Masbate province.  70-year-old Lolita Pepito and her grandchildren Rechely Luna, 12, and Reden Luna, 9, were instantly killed, while two others were wounded.

By the afternoon, soldiers took the bodies of Lolita Pepito and her two grandchildren. Pepito was a member of Gabriela-Masbate. Consistent with their ready-made narrative, the military tried to pass off› the incident as the result of an encounter, as opposed to a deliberate massacre that proved the dangerous situation of civilians due to general militarisation or the prolonged presence of combat troops in rural communities.’’