Official of Peru President’s Party Assassinated; Guerrillas Blamed
A regional official of President Alan Garcia’s ruling party was assassinated near Peru’s border with Bolivia, party officials said Tuesday.
Three women killed Elias Coasaca when he opened the door to his home at 7 a.m. Monday in Puno, 530 miles southeast of Lima, said Sen. Armando Villanueva, secretary general of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. Coasaca was regional secretary of the center-left party.
No group claimed responsibility, but the assassination followed the tactics of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla group. The rebels have been blamed for the deaths of 18 other party members since Garcia took office nearly a year ago, Villanueva said.
Earlier Attempts
The killing of Coasaca came days after the rebels allegedly tried to murder two other leaders of Garcia’s party in Puno in what appeared to signal an intensifying rebel offensive in the Andean frontier region.
Two alleged rebels Friday shot and seriously wounded APRA official Aquiles Hermosa Palma as he left his house in central Puno. On Sunday, attackers threw dynamite at the house of another official, Juan Sanchez Araujo, but did not injure him, authorities said.
Aided by regional feuds over land ownership, the rebels have turned the impoverished mountainous region around Puno into a new stronghold.
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