Peru excavates mass grave of villagers [View All]

Source: Miami Herald

Peru excavates mass grave of villagers
Posted on Sun, May. 25, 2008
By TAMY HIGA
Associated Press Writer

LIMA, Peru -- A Peruvian forensics team has begun excavating a mass grave containing the remains of 123 men, women and children killed by the military 24 years ago, a human rights representative said Saturday.

Investigators in the highland village of Putis, in the southern province of Ayacucho, have exhumed 25 skeletons piled on top of each other among bullet and clothing fragments, said German Vargas, head of a group representing victims' families.

Ayacucho was the epicenter of violence by Maoist Shining Path guerrillas as well as a brutal, state-sponsored counterinsurgency campaign in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1984, according to a government-appointed truth commission, the military offered Putis as a safe haven for people fleeing Shining Path rebels in the region. Soldiers then tricked villagers into digging their own grave and killed them on suspicion of ties to the guerrillas.



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News reports indicate _Bush will be sending American military troops to this same area to do "humanitarian" work, as in building hospitals, etc. They deny that they will be building a base there.

Some reports say there will be 300 troops, and others say 1,000 troops. They all say the area is the Ayacucho area, which is west of Cuzco.