PERU: President Alejandro Toledo on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Peru's central jungle after Shining Path guerrillas killed eight policemen amid an upsurge in violence from the Maoist group.
The emergency decree bans public gatherings and gives police and military the right to search houses and make arrests without warrants.
The rebels killed eight policemen in an ambush on a police vehicle on routine patrol in the remote Huanuco region on Tuesday, some 350km (220 miles) northeast of Lima.
The group that led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and early 1990s has killed at least 19 police and military officers this year as it links up with what officials and drug experts say is an increasingly lucrative drugs trade.
Peru is the world's second-largest cocaine-producer after Colombia, and production has risen sharply since 2003 as poor farmers increase production of coca, the drug's raw material.
"This is Peru's new armed conflict and it revolves around coca, in defence of coca and an alliance between drug-traffickers and remnants of the Shining Path," said independent drugs analyst Jaime Antezana.
New areas of coca were springing up in Peru's central jungle, despite the destruction of 12,000 hectares (29,600 acres) of the crop this year, as Mexican and Colombian cartels expand in Peru, according to the government.
"Drug traffickers are becoming increasingly sophisticated . . . and there are these rebel groups in league with Mexican and Colombian traffickers," Fernando Hurtado, deputy head of state anti-drugs agency Devida, said.
Mr Hurtado estimated Peru now had the capacity to produce 170 tonnes of cocaine this year, up 6 per cent from 2004 and up by more than a quarter compared to 2003. - (Reuters)