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The Peruvian government imposed a nightly evening clock in the province of Pataz, where 13 kidnapped miners were killed last week.
President Dina Boluarte also ordered that mining activities are suspended for a month, while extra police and soldiers are deployed in the region.
The incident seemed to be the activities of criminal gangs in Pataz in the spotlight.
La Poderosa, the Peruvian company that owns the gold mine on which the men worked, said that they were abducted on 26 April by “illegal miners who work together with criminals”. Their bodies were found on Sunday.
President Boluarte said that the armed forces would “take full control of La Poderosa Mining Area”.
La Poderosa said in a statement that a total of 39 people with ties with the company were killed by criminal gangs in Pataz, a mining area of more than 800 km (500 miles) north of the capital, Lima.
It added that the state of emergency that has been in force in the province since February 2024 had had little effect.
“The spiral of uncontrolled violence in Pataz takes place despite the declaration of a state of emergency and the presence of a large police contact that unfortunately was unable to stop the deterioration of safety conditions in the area,” said the statement of 2 May.
The 13 men whose bodies were found on Sunday were employed by a subcontractor, R&R, who worked in the mine of La Poderosa.
They were sent to confront a group that had attacked and occupied the mine, but had been ambushed and seized when they tried to regain control of it.
Videos shared by their abductors showed them tied up and naked, lying in a mine shaft.
The images, and the fact that their abductors shared it with the family members in an attempt to let them pay ransom, caused indignation in Peru.
The discovery of their bodies on Sunday and forensic evidence that suggests that they were blank more than a week before they were found.
A public prosecutor from the region, Luis Guillermo Bringas, told the local media that the area was startled by “a war for mining pits” between illegal miners and criminals on the one hand and legal miners on the other.
