Shining Path rebels ambushed an army patrol in a remote mountainous jungle region on Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding two others, army officials said.
Thirty to 40 rebels staged the ambush in the Pampa Aurora region, north-east of Ayacucho, an army source said on the condition of anonymity. It was unclear if any guerrillas were killed or captured.
The wounded soldiers were flown by helicopter to Ayacucho, south- east of Lima, for treatment, the source said.
The 25-man patrol was one of 20 patrols that are searching the rugged, jungle covered gorges near Ayacucho for Shining Path rebels who kidnapped 71 people at a pipeline construction plant on June 9.
The hostages were released a day later and the rebels then disappeared.
Wednesday’s ambush was the first confrontation between army patrols and rebels since the search began.
Ayacucho police reported on Tuesday that rebels held up 10 buses along two stretches of highway earlier this week.
Police Colonel Benedicto Jimenez, deputy commander of Peru’s anti-terrorism police unit, told foreign journalists on Tuesday that the rebels operating near Ayacucho — thought to number around 330 — are a splinter group that does not follow ideology of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman.
The Shining Path threw Peru into chaos by the early 1990s with a campaign of car bombings, political assassinations and massacres of peasant communities that refused to support it.
Guzman’s 1992 capture and draconian anti-terrorism measures decreed by former President Alberto Fujimori a decade ago helped crush the brutal insurgency. – Sapa-AP