BAGUIO CITY: The New People’s Army (NPA) burned the drilling rig at a mining firm in Quirino, Ilocos Sur on Friday as punishment for environmental destruction.

NPA’s Ilocos Sur–based Alfredo Cesar Command spokesperson Armando Silva said a large diamond drilling machine of the Freeport McMoran-Phelps Dodge mining company in Patiacan, Quirino was torched at around 1 a.m. “to punish the said company for four years of destructive exploration and to support the community’s overwhelming rejection of the extension of the company’s exploration project.”