Weekly Report - 15 July 2003

When the Peruvian government sent several hundred army and marine commandos to help track down a column of Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrillas, details -even numbers of troops involved- were not divulged on the grounds that it was necessary to retain 'operational secrecy'. This secrecy was breached almost instantly by their prey: on 10 July the senderistas encircled and attacked a force of three combined army-marine patrols, killing an army major, a marine officer, three NCOs and two civilian ronderos (self-defence militia), and injuring 10. This was the highest number of casualties suffered by the Peruvian military for many years. 

It came just as the government had reiterated its official line that there was no such thing as a 'resurgence' of SL -just a 'reactivation' of small groups that would soon be stamped out. Statistically at least, SL did resurge: officers of the antiterrorist police directorate, Dircote, began to estimate the number of senderistas prowling the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Apurí­mac and Juní­n (all still under state-of-emergency rules) at 330, an almost threefold increase from what defence minister Aurelio Loret de Mola had ventured the day before the attack. 

The clash took place near the village of Matucana, some 600 kilometres southeast of Lima, in coca-growing country. Ronderos from Matucana reported that a senderista contingent of perhaps 50 had turned up to buy supplies. 

Their accounts confirm previous reports. The guerrillas harangued the population, underlining that SL no longer attacked civilian targets, only the military, and that it was in favour of coca-growing.
An additional detail was that the group was surprisingly well armed, with Israeli assault rifles, grenade launchers and heavy machineguns. 

First Vice-President Raúl Diez Canseco announced that the government's response would be a 'frontal' attack: 'We know where they are moving, and we have to attack them frontally.' 

The version leaked to the press is that the main target will be the areas of San Marín de Pangoa and Vizcatán, described as a hitherto 'impregnable bastion of SL. The 'frontal attack' will involve sending in a large number of ground troops, preceded by an aerial bombardment.

General José Graham Ayllón, commander of the central military region, has set up forward headquarters at the military base of Pichari, not far from where the recent clash took place.