Four Peruvian police officers died Sunday after security forces battled to retake parts of a southern town seized early Saturday by an armed group to demand the resignation of President Alejandro Toledo. A former army major, Antauro Humala, said in a telephone interview from the poor Andean town, Andahuaylas, that he and his group had taken control of several blocks since they burst into the town more than 30 hours earlier. "Toledo must go," he said. "If Toledo doesn't go, then we won't go from here, either." Two hospitals confirmed the four officers' deaths, and Mr. Humala said three more officers and a member of his military-inspired nationalist group had been wounded.
On Saturday night, Mr. Toledo declared a state of emergency in Andahuaylas, 560 miles southeast of Lima, and ordered the siege quashed.
Mr. Humala, shown in news photographs at the scene in olive army fatigues with two pistols tucked in his belt, stormed a police station in Andahuaylas with about 160 supporters in the early hours of New Year's Day and took 10 hostages. He said Sunday that they were safe and that the police had captured seven of his men.