Comrade Artemio pictured with several Shining Path terrorist subordinates.

LIMA - Peru's Minister of Defense, Alberto Otarola, announced to reporters Friday that the fugitive terrorist leader "Comrade Artemio" of the Shining Path terrorist group may have been mortally wounded in combat.

The Shining Path came very close to toppling Peru's democratically elected government in the 1980s and early 1990s, and was one of the most brutal and bloody of the left-wing terrorist groups in Latin America, until it was finally routed by the Peruvian military after terrorism laws were strengthened to allow security officials to more aggressively pursue them.

The 50 year old Comrade Artemio, whose real name is Florindo "Jose" Flores, commands a force of about 150 terrorist guerrillas. The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

Artemio was reported to be wounded early Thursday in Puerto Pizana, a small town in the Upper Huallaga Valley, a region where the majority of Peru's cocaine production region takes place. The small remainder of the Shining Path now survives on cocaine trafficking, and has ceased its former method of killing and kidnapping civilians to draw attention to its cause, which was said to be a mixture of Maoism and Marxism and the ersatz ideology of left-wing college professor Abimael Guzman. 

The Associated Press reported that Nanci Zamora, the mayor of the La Polvora district that includes Puerto Pizana, said that Comrade Artemio had sought medical attention Thursday in the neighboring village of Santa Rosa de Mishoyo.

Zamora said that a local medical technician had reported that Artemio showed up with gunshot wounds to the chest and leg, and that subordinates had ferried him down the Mishoyo river, a tributary of the Huallaga river.

It was reported that Artemio had told reporters that the Shining Path's cause was lost and that he was seeking a truce with government security forces. He also claimed to have sent a letter to President Ollanta Humala, but had received no response. 

The self-described Marxist told journalists that the only way to change the capitalist system was through a socialist government, "but at this moment that is not possible."

The Humala administration has thus far refused to negotiate with the terrorist group, whose 150 or so members are a small remnant of the fanatical insurgency that introduced itself to the public by hanging puppies from lamp posts all over Peru, and killed thousands of people during the 1980s and 1990s.