Drug Traffickers Attack Peru Police Post, Killing 6

Cocaine traffickers, firing automatic rifles and hurling grenades, killed six policemen and wounded six in a pre-dawn attack on a police post in Peru’s coca-growing jungle region, the government said today.

Eight other policemen assigned to the post in Uchiza, 270 miles northeast of Lima, are not accounted for, but are believed to have survived and to be hiding in the nearby jungle, an Interior Ministry official said.

Among those killed was the police captain who commanded the post.

The attack Monday was the boldest by drug traffickers since a 72-man police convoy was ambushed 60 miles south of Uchiza in April, 1986. That attack killed five policemen and an assistant district attorney in charge of narcotics investigations.

The surprise attack came at 3:30 a.m. Monday while the police were sleeping. “They had no time to defend themselves,” a police spokesman said.

The ministry official said reinforcements had not reached Uchiza by Monday night. He said the trip by land from Tingo Maria was “too dangerous” because of the threat of ambushes.

Uchiza, a ramshackle town of muddy streets, has about 5,000 residents. Officials say it is controlled by a local Peruvian drug boss with ties to the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia.

Tingo Maria, with 80,000 inhabitants, is the largest town in the Huallaga River Valley, a rugged no-man’s-land in the heart of Peru’s coca leaf growing region. Peru is the world’s biggest producer of coca leaf, providing the raw material for half the cocaine that enters the United States each year.

Officials say traffickers are stepping up attacks to counter the government’s coca eradication programs and drug raids, which are financed by the United States.