ZAMBOANGA CITY,2 January 2008 — Suspected communist guerrillas greeted the new year yesterday by attacking a mining company’s compound in South Cotabato province in the southern Philippines, torching a building and destroying equipment, the police and military said.

Workers of the Sagittarius Mines, Inc. in South Cotabato’s town of Tampakan have barely slept after celebrating the coming of 2008 when rebels struck at 3 a.m., said a military report.

Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres Jr., head of the Philippine Army’s public affairs office, said damages due to the attack was estimated at 20 million pesos, or close to $500,000.

No one was reported injured or killed in the raid, but the attack sent a chilling warning to the government that the rebel New People’s Army (NPA) was still a force to reckon with despite the military’s claim that the movement was weakening.

The attack was also feared to discourage foreign investors from responding to an invitation by the Arroyo administration to go into mining projects in the Philippines.

The Sagittarius Mines Inc. is 62.5 percent owned by the London-listed Xstrata and 34 percent by Australia’s Indophil Resources N.L.

Tampakan has one of the biggest undeveloped copper reserve in Southeast Asia. Its total resources are estimated at 12.8 million tons of contained copper and 15.2 million ounces of contained gold. The mine is due to launch production in 2013, with annual output of 200,000 tons of copper and 200,000 ounces of gold.

Torres said the raid could mean that the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was “no longer being followed” by its guerilla fighters. The CPP and NPA leadership have declared a truce on New Year’s Day.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but the military and police readily blamed the NPA, citing previous raids by communist guerrillas in the south on companies who refused to pay illegal taxation.

Indigenous tribes were also protesting the operation of the mine, saying it encroached into ancestral lands and caused pollution in rivers and streams in Tampakan, which is considered a watershed area.

In March last year, insurgents raided the private coal mining firm MG Mining Company in Raja Cabunsuan village in Surigao del Sur’s Lingig town. The NPA seized weapons from security guards at the mining headquarters after MG executives refused to pay taxes.

The NPA had been collecting so-called “revolutionary taxes” to support its armed struggle to overthrow the democratic government for a separate Maoist homeland in the Philippines.

The latest attack came days after the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said the NPA has achieved significant military victories in 2007 and warned of more and bigger offensive this year.

Military officials have earlier promised to crush the movement by 2010.