SALON

Monday, Apr 16, 2012 11:30 PM UTC

Police missing in Peru after hostages freed

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Police missing in Peru after hostages freedMilitary officers carry a coffin covered by a Peruvian flag containing the body of police officer Lander Tamani during his funeral in Lima, Peru, Monday April 16, 2012. According to authorities, Tamani was killed on Saturday during an operation to rescue rebel-held hostages in Peru's Amazon jungle. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)(Credit: AP)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s military on Monday sent more troops to search for two police officers who disappeared during a jungle search for 36 hostages.

The kidnapped construction workers were freed on Saturday by Shining Path rebels who had abducted the men five days earlier from a town near the country’s main natural gas fields.

Additional troops were sent to the district of Echarate on Monday to join the search for the police and pursue the rebels, Defense Minister Alberto Otarola said.

Peruvian officials have said two soldiers and two police officers were killed in the search operation, and 10 other soldiers were injured. A funeral was held in Lima on Monday for one of the police officers.

Peru’s government sent a force of about 1,500 soldiers and police to search for the hostages last week. The government has said those killed included a police officer who was in a helicopter on Thursday when the aircraft was attacked with gunfire.

Peruvian officials have said the hostages were freed because that search operation put pressure on the rebels, and that there were no negotiations with the captors, which had initially demanded a $10 million ransom.

Officials have not confirmed details of how the two police officers went missing. But Dionisio Vilca, the father of one of the missing officers, said on Sunday that comrades who had been with the two told him the men had just been lowered from a helicopter when a gunbattle with rebels broke out. Vilca said they told him the helicopter fled the area and left the two police behind.

The Peruvian workers were kidnapped on April 9 from hotels in the hamlet of Kepashiato, near the Camisea natural gas field. They were working as contractors on gas industry projects, and included employees of the Swedish construction company Skanska and the Peruvian company Construcciones Modulares.

Once freed, the men hiked out of the jungle on Saturday, reaching a small town.

The Shining Path, which is financed by the cocaine trade, is a small remnant of the Maoist rebel group that terrorized Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. It is believed to number about 300-500 fighters centered in the Ene and Apurimac Valley region where more than half of Peru’s coca is grown. The town where the kidnapping occurred is in an adjacent region.

The rebels once before carried out a mass abduction in 2003, when they kidnapped 71 of workers of the Argentine company Techint who were laying a natural gas pipeline. Those hostages were freed two days later, and the government said no ransom was paid.

More Carla Salazar.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
214 points215 points | 7 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
158 points159 points | comment
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
95 points96 points | 28 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
48 points49 points | 8 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
25 points26 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations