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Peru captures Shining Path rebel leader
09 Nov 2003 18:06:48 GMT
LIMA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Peruvian soldiers captured a leader of the Shining Path rebel group after a clash in the Andes in which four guerrillas were killed and an officer wounded, the government said on Sunday.

"The blow the remaining Shining Path members must be feeling in the Ene and Apurimac area must be very strong because he was the No. 2," Defense Minister Aurelio Loret de Mola told reporters.

The Ene and Apurimac valleys, some 312 miles (500 km) southeast of Lima, are considered the last bastion of Shining Path. The rebel movement, once one of Latin America's bloodiest, died down after the 1992 capture of its leader but officials estimate a few hundred rebels remain holed up in Andean and jungle areas.

The group remains on a U.S. list of terror organizations.

The government says some 135 rebels operate in the Ene and Apurimac valleys in alliance with drug traffickers.

The leader captured is Jaime Zuniga, also known as "Cirilo" or "Dalton," and officials said he took part in planning the kidnapping in June of 71 workers of Argentine company Techint, who were working on a gas pipeline in the Peruvian jungle.

Loret de Mola said the rebel also led an ambush against an army helicopter in 1999 in which five soldiers died.

Two other rebels were captured with "Cirilo" on Friday night, just after a clash between an army patrol and a Shining Path column in which four rebels died and one officer was wounded. "Cirilo" suffered a bullet wound in his pelvis from the first clash.

A state truth commission has blamed Shining Path for more than half of the estimated 69,000 victims of rebel wars on the state in the 1980s and 1990s.


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