Reply #5: Murdered children found in Peru's largest mass grave [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Murdered children found in Peru's largest mass grave
AFP
Published: Friday, May 30

PUTIS, Peru - A team of forensic anthropologists working in this Andean ghost town uncovered Friday the remains of children shot and buried in a mass grave of victims of Peru's 1980-2000 internal war.

More than 100 bodies are feared buried at this remote hamlet in Ayacucho province, the largest known grave of its type in Peru, according to government prosecutors.

The grave is located in Putis, a hamlet 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) above sea level and some 650 kilometers (400 miles) south-east of Lima. The site was abandoned soon after 123 people - men, women and children - from area farming communities were slaughtered there on December 13, 1984.

According to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), army soldiers suspected the farmers supported guerrillas with the Shining Path. Ayacucho is one of Peru's poorest provinces and the birthplace of the Maoist insurgency.

Today all that remains is a church with a collapsed wall and rows of empty and dilapidated houses. One house had to be rebuilt to serve as a headquarters for the scientists who have been working at the site for the past two weeks.

Peruvians are still coming to terms with the abuses committed during the bitter 1980-2000 war against the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) insurgencies. Nearly 70,000 people were either killed or went missing during that period, according to government figures.

"The most difficult thing is to discover in this mass grave the remains of so many children who were shot dead," said prosecutor Cristina Olazabal, who is overseeing the work at Putis.

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