Andean Group - August 2009 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Three police officers and two female civilians were killed in an attack on a base carried out by the guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso in early August. The timing of the attack was embarrassing for the government. President Alan Garcí­a had just delivered his state-of-the-nation address on Peru's Independence Day on 28 July, promising that his government was getting on top of the security threat. The attack also took place on the same day that the ruling Partido Aprista Peruano (PAP) was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of its founder Ví­ctor Raúl Haya de la Torre.

Some 50 to 60 guerrillas attacked a base of police special forces, Dirección de Operaciones Especiales, charged with combating drug-trafficking and terrorism, in San José de Secce in the south-eastern department of Ayacucho. The attack took place very late at night on 1 August and into the next day.

The police managed to repel the guerrillas, who were almost certainly trying to capture the base in order to take hostages. This minor success did not provide the government with any respite. On 16 July the joint command of the armed forces reported that two soldiers had been killed and four injured at the Pichari base in Cusco. It attributed the fatalities to the accidental detonation of a grenade during exercises.

One of the soldiers killed and one of those injured were minors. This was awkward for the government. Not only had the commander of the army, General Otto Guibovich, specifically claimed in May that “there is not a single minor left in the army", following the death in combat of a minor who had been forcibly recruited, but also the government frequently denounces Sendero for recruiting minors.

• Artemio

A unit of the Frente Policial Huallaga located and raided what it claimed was the camp of Camarada Artemio in Yanajanca, Huánuco, in the Upper Huallaga basin on 21 July. The police exchanged gunfire with the presumed guerrillas, who soon fled, leaving behind rucksacks, uniforms, ammunition and other supplies. They also found a trail of blood, which led them to surmise that Artemio, the leader of the smaller of the two Sendero Luminoso units still up in arms, had been injured.