Peru's police chief says armed men ambushed a police vehicle in the southern part of the country Monday, killing two officers and wounding a third.
General David Rodriguez said the attackers fired machine guns and threw grenades at a police car near the town of Huanta, in the state of Ayacucho.
Authorities often blame such attacks on the Maoist Shining Path rebels. The group battled Peruvian authorities in a guerilla war that killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s.
The violence mostly subsided after the Shining Path's leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured in 1992.
But remnants of the group continue to carry out small attacks, primarily in remote areas used to produce coca, the raw material in cocaine.