Reuters North American News Service, November 27th, 2007
LIMA (Reuters) - Police killed a commander of the
Shining Path insurgency and arrested eight guerrillas in a
coca-growing region in Peru, officials said Tuesday, after
clashing with the group for the third time this month.
Epifanio Espiritu Acosta, who used the alias JL, was shot
before dawn in Aucayacu, 236 miles (380 km) northeast of the
capital Lima in the mountainous Andean region of Huanuco, where
he was in charge of a small group of guerrillas.
"There was a shootout with terrorist forces and in the
combat Epifanio Espiritu Acosta died," Interior Minister Luis
Alva told reporters. Espiritu was the most important aide to
"Comrade Artemio," the insurgency's leader, Alva said.
Remnants of the Shining Path, a Maoist group that led a
bloody rebellion until its supreme leader, Abimael Guzman, was
captured in 1992, have largely abandoned their ideological
struggle in recent years and gone to work for drug traffickers
in Peru, the world's No. 2 cocaine producer after Colombia.
Two of the eight members of the group detained on Tuesday
were wounded and police said they seized a cache of weapons.
Suspected members of the Shining Path have killed up to 14
anti-narcotics workers since President Alan Garcia took office
in July 2006, apparently to protest government drug raids.
Earlier this month, Garcia extended a state of emergency,
allowing police and the military to intensify raids in some
coca-growing regions.
Officials say the Shining Path has small but active groups
in the country's main coca-growing areas, with total membership
of about 400.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino and Terry Wade, Editing by Stuart
Grudgings)
