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Last Updated: Nov 2nd, 2009 - 17:32:57 |
LIMA (Reuters) - Suspected members of the Shining Path guerrilla group stole dynamite from a Peruvian mining camp of U.S.-based metals company Doe Run, government officials said on Wednesday, in the insurgency's third attack this month.
At least 30 armed members of the rebel group invaded the site where Doe Run is exploring for minerals in the coca-rich Huancavelica region of Peru's southern Andes early Monday. They also took radios, food and medicine.
At least 17 people have died in two assaults the Shining Path has carried out this month against the army. The attacks come as Peru prepares to host world leaders for the APEC summit in November.
In the first attack, the group ambushed soldiers by placing explosives on a dirt road and then setting them off with detonator cord as a convoy of military trucks drove by.
"I can confirm there was an incursion," Defense Minister Antero Flores told Reuters.
Later, he warned mining companies to take more precautions.
"Companies have to be much more effective with their security measures, especially when they have dynamite and similar materials, so that they aren't at risk of being taken by delinquents," he said in Congress, according to Peru's state news agency.
Vice President Luis Giampietri said, "this is an isolated event. We can't lose sight of that, but the materials must be recovered."
Doe Run declined to comment.
President Alan Garcia, whose approval rating has fallen to 19 percent, has been sending soldiers to Peru's coca-growing regions since August in an effort to destroy what is left of the Shining Path, which security officials say includes about 300 guerrillas.
The Shining Path, which led a deadly insurrection that started in 1980, largely collapsed in the early 1990s after its leadership was captured. At its height, it routinely robbed dynamite from Peru's numerous mines.
Holdout members of the group remain active, though the government says they have mostly abandoned their Maoist ideology in favor of running drugs.
The Shining Path has killed about three dozen police, soldiers and anti-narcotics workers since Garcia began his term two years ago. Peru is the world's second largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, after Colombia.
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