Peru bomb attack has no connection with Shining Path

There is no evidence linking a deadly bombing in a market in Peru's southern highlands to the Shining Path rebel movement.

Photo: Peru bomb attack has no connection with Shining Path

Six people were killed and 48 wounded late Friday when a backpack containing dynamite and nails exploded during a celebration in a market in Juliaca, 830 kilometers (520 miles) southeast of Peru's capital.

"We have nothing to justify calling it a subversive attack," Col. Romeo Delgado, head of the police in Juliaca, told The Associated Press by telephone.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, he said.

Delgado said the attack could have been part of a dispute between smugglers who provide market vendors with merchandise. At least two of the victims sold computers in the market, local media reported.

Smugglers often sell clothing, shoes and electronics from Chile and Bolivia to area markets, he said. Juliaca is (135 kilometers) 85 miles from the Bolivian border.

Some 15,000 merchants marched through Juliaca on Monday to demand an explanation of the attack, state news agency Andina reported.

The Maoist Shining Path's staged its first armed attack in 1980 and almost brought Peru's government to its knees in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, political assassinations and bombings. But since the 1992 capture of founder Abimael Guzman, the insurgency has been reduced to a few hundred guerrillas who stage sporadic ambushes of security forces.