Four Peruvian troops and two members of the Shining Path terrorist group were killed in a gunfight in the department of Ayacucho where a law enforcement patrol was performing territorial control actions, it was reported from Lima by the Joint Command of the Armed Forces. Remnants of the Maoist rebel group once focused on overthrowing the government have turned to drug trafficking.
Peruvian regular forces gunned down between 10 and 15 members of the Shining Path rebel group during an Operation Patriot deployment in which the rebels' leader Víctor Quispe Palomino, also known as Comrade José, managed to escape despite being wounded.
Abimael Guzmán, former leader and founder of the infamous guerrilla movement Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) which has left some 69,000 people dead, has died Saturday in prison. He was 86.
A terrorist attack allegedly perpetrated by a column of the Shining Path group has left at least 18 dead in the Peruvian province of Satipo, in the Junín region, in the jungle Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, it was reported late Monday.
Two Peruvian security force members were killed Monday in an armed clash with remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement in a key coca-growing region, the government said.
Former Peruvian President Alan García was reported to have died on Wednesday after shooting himself in the head minutes before a warrant for his arrest was to be executed. Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez, 69, was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2011. He also served in Congress.
Peru’s newly named interior minister has acknowledged being formally accused of murder in the 1988 killing of a journalist when he was a young army intelligence officer fighting Shining Path rebels. But Daniel Urresti faced reporters and proclaimed his innocence and said he had no plans to resign.
Peru’s government has extended a state of emergency for 60 days in several districts of south-central regions because of the presence of the guerrilla group Shining Path remnants.