The World - News from March 29, 1989

Leftist guerrillas attacked a police post in a cocaine-producing area of the Peruvian jungle, killing at least 12 police officers and wounding 20, authorities said in Lima, the capital. About 50 guerrillas attacked the Uchiza police post in the Upper Huallaga river valley with dynamite and firebombs. A police spokesman said the rebels also burned several houses in a remote town near an area where U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Peruvian anti-drug experts recently sprayed a controversial herbicide over part of a coca field. Drug traffickers and leftist rebels, some belonging to the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), have joined forces in resisting drug eradication efforts in the area, officials say.