Between 10 and 15 members of the last remnant of the terrorist group luminous path died during a military operation, from which the organization’s leader, Víctor Quispe Palomino, alias “Comrade José”, managed to escape, the Peruvian Armed Forces reported Wednesday.
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“We have, by intelligence, communications and various means, approximately between 10 and 15 killed and a good number of wounded (…) It has been a heavy blow to terrorism in which we have seriously affected its center of gravity,” he declared. the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces (CCFFAA), Manuel Gómez de la Torre.
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The general added that the leader of the terrorist group managed to escape from the operation, although “because of the blood” found in the place, “he was probably wounded.”
“We assume that it is possible that it has left the area,” he added during a conference on the balance of this offensive action that began last Thursday in the Vizcatán region, the “hard zone” of the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers ( Vraem).
The head of the CCFFAA specified that it was possible to disrupt the control and supply system of this dissident faction of Sendero Luminosowhich is still active in the Vraem, where it lives in alliance with drug traffickers.
“Right now, they are completely incommunicado,” he said. The military incursion into the terrorist camps also seized a large quantity of weapons, communications material, equipment, computers and “an abundance of literature,” which, according to the general, “will definitely allow the production of interesting and important intelligence information” for continue operations and “end this scourge”.
“(We have) glasses, clothes marked with José’s name, his rifle, his cane, his hat, his laptops where he kept his personal information and that of his party,” explained Gómez de la Torre. For its part, the Army had two casualties during clashes last Friday with suspected terrorists, deaths that, according to President Pedro Castillo, “will not go unpunished.”
The Vraem is an extensive region of mountainous forest divided into four different departmentswhere more than half of the cocaine that the country is estimated to export abroad annually is produced.
According to information that Gómez de la Torre provided to Efe last June, there are currently 46 counter-subversive bases in the Vraem, which has been in a state of emergency for more than a decade.
The status of the terrorist organization
(We have) glasses, clothes marked with José’s name, his rifle, his cane, his hat, his laptops where he kept his personal information and that of his party.
Nowadays, the Vraem is the last active scene of the internal armed conflict (1980-2000) unleashed in Peru by the Shining Path group of Maoist origin and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), which caused some 69,000 deaths, according to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR).
Since the end of the 1990s, when the entire Shining Path leadership was captured, the Quispe Palomino brothers took over the organization in the Vraem. Nevertheless, the founder of Sendero, Abimael Guzmánwho died in September of last year in a maximum security prison where he was serving a life sentence, did not recognize them as such and they did not follow orders from the leader, known by the alias “Chairman Gonzalo.”
However, before Guzmán’s capture in 1992, the two brothers participated in several criminal acts by Sendero in its bloody crusade to imitate China’s people’s war and install a Maoist regime in Peru.
The death of Jorge Quispe Palomino, “Comrade Raúl”, was confirmed by the CCFFAA in March of last year, although it occurred in January due to a chronic kidney condition that worsened after being injured three months earlier by projectiles fired from helicopters during a confrontation against military and police.
His discharge allegedly left “Comrade José” as the sole leader of the last remnant of the armed group.
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