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Radio-Canada - French

23 Peruvian cops wounded in gunbattle with heavily armed fruit pedlars
08:16 AM EDT Oct 16

LIMA, Peru (AP) - More than 100 Peruvian riot police battled Friday for control of the capital's largest wholesale fruit market against vendors armed with shotguns, pistols and homemade firebombs.

No fatalities were reported.

But when the tear gas cleared, 23 police were injured, including five with buckshot wounds to the face and two with bullets in their arms and legs, Interior Minister Javier Reategui told Canal N television.

Police said 10 fruit market workers were injured and more than 110 people were arrested.

Canal N broadcast images of market workers firing weapons from inside doorways and atop rickety fruit market stalls after some 140 police broke through the main gate.

"This is a war. The police were doing their job...then people started to shoot at them with shotguns," Police Gen. Luis Montoya said as the operation came to an end.

"We simply cannot permit this and this is why we've come to take over this area."

For years, Lima officials have tried to gain control of the market in one of the city's most dangerous districts, where the vendors allegedly ignored government regulations and evaded paying municipal taxes.

The market is located inside a former transportation depot the size of a city block, which is entirely surrounded by a three-metre-high brick wall - making it a veritable fortress.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

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