Suspected Peru Rebels Attack Soviet Embassy; 1 Killed, 1 Captured

Suspected Maoist rebels attacked the Soviet Embassy on Tuesday, touching off a firefight inside the compound in which a guerrilla was killed by gunfire and a bomb that exploded in his hands, the government said.

One rebel was captured after a firefight with two policewomen in a nearby neighborhood after the guerrillas fled the embassy complex, but two other rebels escaped. One of the officers was injured in the gun battle, officials said.

Earlier Tuesday, the leftist rebels assassinated a regional official of President Alan Garcia’s ruling center-left American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party in a city near the Bolivian border, said Sen. Armando Villanueva, the party’s secretary general.

Although no rebel group claimed responsibility for either assault, both bore the stamp of the Maoist Shining Path group, officials said. Shining Path rebels have attacked the Soviet Embassy and other diplomatic targets before.

Police captured Rogelio Mejia Lijarza, who they said took part in the attack on the colonial-style Soviet Embassy on Tuesday afternoon, Interior Minister Abel Salinas said.

A member of a rebel squad slipped into the embassy posing as a messenger but died in an interior garden when a bomb in his hands exploded, police said.

A security guard shot at the rebel just as the bomb went off, and police said both gunshots and the blast caused the rebel’s death. The embassy was not damaged.