Peru Shining Path rebel leader said to be wounded
LIMA, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The most important leader of the leftist Shining Path insurgency has been wounded in a clash in Peru's Huallaga Valley, a high-level military official and a civil society group that was in recent contact with the reclusive rebel boss said on Thursday.
Artemio, the nom de guerre of Florindo Eleuterio Flores, heads a remnant group of guerrillas that went into the cocaine trade after the founders of the Maoist rebels were imprisoned in the early 1990s during a bloody war against the state that killed nearly 70,000 people.
The military official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, and the Instituto de Defensa Legal, a civil society group that interviewed Artemio in the jungle in December, said the extent of his injuries was unknown. The government has not provided official comment on the clash that took place before dawn on Thursday.
Peruvian anti-drug police have been trying to arrest Artemio for years. The United States two years ago offered a multimillion dollar reward for information leading to Artemio's capture in the world's top grower of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.
Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, who fought against the Shining Path when he was a military officer in the 1990s, has vowed to step up efforts to catch people the government calls "narco-terrorists." (Reporting by Teresa Cespedes and Terry Wade; Editing by Jackie Frank)
2012-02-09 18:17:23+00:00 GMT+00:00 (Reuters)