Members of Peru’s leftist Shining Path rebel group kidnapped dozens of workers in Peru's natural gas industry on Monday, then freed some hours later, reports said.

A spokesman for Skanska, an international construction company headquartered in Sweden, told msnbc.com that 29 of its employees — all Peruvian nationals — were kidnapped on Monday, and that two women employees later were released. The spokesman, Edvard Lind, said the company could not provide any other detail at this time.

Regional police chief Col. Roland Bayona says the gunmen originally seized 30 Skanska workers overnight Sunday but later freed 23, The Associated Press reported. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

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The kidnapping occurred at Kepashiato in the Camisea gas fields in southern Peru.

The motive for the kidnapping remained unclear, but it was the first large-scale kidnapping by the rebel group in nearly a decade.

The Shining Path is a leftist insurgency founded in the late 1960s with inspiration from China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong. The guerrilla group lost much of its strength after President Alberto Fujimori launched a major offensive against the rebels in the 1990s. It has been nearly a decade since the group conducted a large kidnapping operation.

"Shining Path rebels took them hostage early this morning in the village of Kepashiato,'' an official from the natural gas pipeline company said. "They took them from the hotel where they were sleeping.''

The pipeline, which carries gas from Peru's Camisea gas fields to Lima, is owned by a consortium including companies from Argentina, the United States, and South Korea. Skanksa is building a natural gas compression plant in the area, Lind said.

Neither the government nor Skanska has said whether they had intervened to free some of the workers, Reuters reported.

The leftists were engaged in a bloody battle with Peruvian government forces throughout the 1980s, resulting in a reported 70,000 deaths and human rights abuses on both sides.

The rebel group splintered after the capture of their leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and many top deputies, destroying the group’s chain of command, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

A couple of factions of the Shining Path continue to be active, generating income through the illegal drug trade.

None had committed a major kidnapping since 2003, Reuters reported. In that case, the rebels abducted 68 employees of an Argentinian company — also doing work related to the gas pipeline — and three police guards.

President Ollanta Humala, a former military officer, has vowed capture the last remnants of Shining Path. In February, government forces caught Shining Path leader "Artemio," also known as Florindo Eleuterio Flores in the Huallaga Valley. He was the last high-ranking figure from the historical core of the insurgency still at large, Reuters reported.

After Artemio's arrest, the government said it would go after rebels in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers region, where they are led by Victor Quispe.

A high-ranking military official said the army was closing in on a group of rebels at the time of Monday's kidnapping.

"They took the hostages to halt our advance,'' the military official said.

Earlier the BBC reported the rebels had demanded the release of "Comrade Artemio" in exchange for the hostages.

A resident of Kepashiato village told RPP radio that 150 armed insurgents were in the area and about 80 of them carried out the kidnapping, Reuters reported.

In this week’s kidnappings, the workers were seized in a jungle region near the Apurimac-Ene valley, one remaining stronghold of the guerrilla group, according to the BBC.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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The most important leader of Peru's leftist Shining Path insurgency has been captured by security forces after being shot in a remote jungle rife with drug trafficking, President Ollanta Humala said on Sunday, announcing his first major victory against what remains of the rebel group.

Artemio, the nom de guerre of Florindo Eleuterio Flores, was seriously wounded and receiving medical attention, Humala said.

The rebel boss led a remnant group of several hundred guerrillas who went into the cocaine trade after the founder of the Maoist insurgency was imprisoned in the 1990s - all but ending a bloody war against the state that killed nearly 70,000 people.

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Though the rebels no longer pose a potent risk to the stability of the state, Artemio still claims allegiance to jailed Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman.

 

 

"We can tell the country today that the terrorists in the Huallaga Valley have been defeated, having captured alive Artemio," Humala said at a military base in the jungle.

Humala initially had said Artemio was dead.

Artemio was wounded early on Thursday and suffered a punctured lung and a severe wound to one of his hands that caused heavy bleeding.

Defense Minister Alberto Otarola said special forces attacked Artemio but gave no details about the operation. One local media outlet said Artemio had been shot by one or more members of the Shining Path who conspired with the government to turn against him.

After the shooting, some of Artemio's aides took him to a medical clinic and a nurse who was forced at gunpoint to bandage his wounds later said he was mortally wounded. His aides fled with Artemio as army helicopters chased them, but eventually they abandoned him on a riverbank, to weak to go on.

Peruvian anti-drug police tried for years to arrest Artemio and the United States two years ago offered a multimillion dollar reward for information leading to his capture.

Peru is the world's top grower of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

Humala, who fought against the Shining Path when he was a military officer in the 1990s, has vowed to step up efforts to catch what the government calls "narco-terrorists." His predecessor, former President Alan Garcia, failed to stamp out several hundred rebels, who have yet to surrender their arms.

"With this, I think we can now begin to pacify the Huallaga," Humala said referring to the major cocaine trafficking area.

Humala's approval rating rose 7 percentage points to 54 percent in January after he shuffled his cabinet to give it a more law-and-order bent and to crack down on protests against big mining projects.

In December, the reclusive Artemio emerged briefly from hiding to ask the government for a truce and for amnesty after years of fighting. His pleas were rejected and government officials said they would hunt him down.

Besides the Shining Path group in the Huallaga Valley, another faction of the rebels is active in a knotted bundle of river valleys in southeastern Peru known as the VRAE, which is the world's most densely-planted coca-growing region.

Security analysts say the group in the VRAE no longer espouses Maoist ideology and is basically a criminal enterprise engaged in the drug trade.

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Journalists working with Peru's Legal Defense Institute (IDL) and The Guardian traveled deep into Peru's Amazon jungle to conduct a rare interview with 'Comrade Artemio', the most senior leader of the notorious Shining Path guerrilla group to remain at large.

The Guardian's Dan Collyns, who describes Artemio as "a folk legend: loathed and respected in equal measure," says that this is the first time that Artemio has agreed to allow his face to be shown. 

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The U.S. State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or capture. 

The Associated Press reports from LIMA, Peru:

 One of two remaining leaders of the Shining Path guerrilla group in Peru said his troops will cease attacks and is calling for a truce to start peace negotiations with the government.

Known as Comrade Artemio, Jose Flores Hala told journalists Friday in his jungle hideout that he "isn't going to deny" that the government won.

Flores said his roughly 150 guerrillas wouldn't demobilize without a "process of frank and real negotiations." But, he told reporters, "We have no intention to brandish arms of war in armed struggle."

The Shining Path has shrunk since its 1980s heyday when it controlled large swaths of the Peruvian countryside. Troops captured leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and his successor Comrade Feliciano in 1999. Read the full story.