RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – An alleged attack by a column of the Shining Path terrorist group has left at least 18 dead in the province of Satipo, in the Junin region, in the jungle valley of the Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro rivers (VRAEM), police sources confirmed Monday, May 24.
According to Police Commander General Cesar Cervantes, the attack caused the death of at least ten men, six women, and two children in an area of bars and brothels near a bank of the Ene river in the area of San Miguel del Ene, one of the areas dominated by drug trafficking.
The remnants of the terrorist group, which functions as an armed protector of cocaine producers in the region, have been operating in that area for decades.
According to Peruvian television news channel N, the Shining Path columns had warned the people to withdraw from the area, and the attack allegedly occurred because of disobedience to their orders.
Images from the scene show bullet casings and a pamphlet with the logo of the Communist Party of Peru, the official name of the Shining Path, in the middle of a camp in the middle of the jungle.
The pamphlet urged villagers not to vote for presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.
The Shining Path, responsible for the highest number of victims during the internal conflict in the country between 1980 and 2000, had turned into a drug trafficking mafia in the last decades, and there had been no known attacks on the population for years.
Keiko Fujimori’s national security advisor, Fernando Rospigliosi, shared on his Twitter account a verbal report stating that the attack took place on Sunday night against 18 people in San Miguel del Ene.