1400 held in police net

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 11

1400 held in police net

NZPA-AP Lima The Peruvian police swept through slums and arrested nearly 1400 people yesterday after the capital was blacked out for one hour and a car-bomb exploded outside the prefect’s office, injuring a policeman and three women. Leftist rebels also exploded sticks of dynamite outside a bank in a workingclass neighbourhood of Rimae, shattering the building’s windows. The rebels made a similar attack on an office of the governing Aprista Party in the shanty town of Villa el Salvador. A leg was amputated

from one of the three women bystanders injured in the car-bomb explosion. The police said that a maintenance worker had found a 4kg bomb in a cardboard box on the fourth floor of the municipal palace shortly before the blackout and called the police to deactivate it. A spokesman for the Civil Guard, the national police force, blamed the attacks and black-out on the Maoistinspired Shining Path, the largest, most radical, and oldest of three rebel groups in the economically distressed Andean nation. He said that the police sweeps through slums had

netted 1390 people, who were being questioned. The sweeps, which began last year and occur almost nightly, are intended as a measure against crime and terrorism. Many of those picked up are prostitutes, vagrants, or individuals without proper identification, and even street children. Most are released a few hours later. The black-out and bombings were the first in Lima since Alan Garcia became President on July 28 and pledged to seek negotiations with rebels to end political violence that has claimed at least 5000 lives since 1980. ________

> Mr Garcia, who has ! promised to divide the i wealth among Peru’s many t poor, said in his inaugural i speech that he would create I a peace commission to “seek a dialogue to per- ) suade those who are wrong to return to democracy”. The new Government exi tended for 60 more days : yesterday the state of emergency in 25 provinces of six departments in the Andes, i where the guerrilla war has : been most intense. The state I of emergency, first imposed ; in March 1981, bans meetI ings, restricts freedom of movement and puts the i military in charge of the area.