Peru’s Leader Says 30 Died in Prison Assault

President Alberto Fujimori said Sunday that 28 Maoist guerrillas and two policemen died when police mounted an assault on a rebel-held cellblock to end a four-day prison uprising.

Fujimori, on a tour of the maximum-security Canto Grande prison, said 451 inmates surrendered, 20 were taken to Lima hospitals and 13 were unaccounted for.

Fujimori did not give a figure for policemen wounded in the four-day siege at the jail.

As the president toured the prison, hundreds of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels who surrendered were kept under police guard lying face down in the courtyard of the jail.

“If there has been 28 deaths, it is because some terrorists wanted to come out (of the cellblock) but the Shining Path leaders were firing at them,” he told reporters.

On Saturday night, police opened a hole in the rear entrance of the men’s cellblock, where the rebels had holed up after police moved into the prison Wednesday to transfer some 120 women inmates, Fujimori said. Police snipers occupying rooftops of neighboring cellblocks wore down the guerrillas for eight hours with continuous automatic weapons fire, stun grenades and explosives. The guerrillas finally gave up.

Fujimori dissolved Congress and closed the courts April 5, saying they had blocked his attempts to fight the rebels and the drug trade.