Low Level Resurgence (2002-present)
On March 20, 2002, a bomb exploded at "El Polo", a mall on an upper scale district of Lima near the US embassy.
On June 9, 2003 a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentine company Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the Camisea gas pipeline project that would take natural gas from Cuzco to Lima. According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the hostage-takers asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the hostage-takers abandoned the hostages. According to rumor, the company paid the ransom.
On October 13, 2006, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
On May 27, 2007, the 27th anniversary of the Shining Path's first attack against the Peruvian state, a homemade bomb in a backpack was set off in a market in the southern Peruvian city of Juliaca, killing six and wounding 48. Because of the timing of the attack the Shining Path is suspected by the Peruvian authorities of holding responsibility.
In October 2008, in Huancavelica province, the senderistas engaged a military and civil convoy with explosives and firearms, demonstrating their continued ability to strike and inflict casualties on easy targets. The clash resulted in the death of 12 soldiers and two to seven civilians.
On April 9, 2009, Shining Path ambushed and killed 13 Peruvian soldiers in the Apurímac and Ene river valleys in Ayacucho, said Peruvian minister of Defense, Antero Flores-Aráoz.
The group was, until recently, led by a man known as Comrade Artemio. Rather than attempt to destroy the Peruvian state and replace it with a communist state, Artemio pledged to carry out attacks until the Peruvian government releases Shining Path prisoners and negotiates an end to the war. These demands were made in various video statements made by Artemio. The vast majority of Peruvians continue to hold the Shining Path in low regard.
On February 12, 2012, Artemio was captured by a combined force of the Peruvian Army and the Police. President Ollanta Humala said that he would now step up the fight against the other remaining band of Shining Path rebels in the Ene-Apurimac valley.
Read more about this topic: Internal Conflict In Peru
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