Andrew Whalen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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LIMA, Peru - Peru's military says 12 soldiers and two civilians are dead after Shining Path rebels ambushed a column of military trucks in the southeastern mountains.

The military high command is calling the bomb and gunfire attack the deadliest in years by the rebels. A military statement says 14 soldiers and three civilians, including a five-year-old boy, were wounded in Thursday evening's attack.

Peru's conflict with the guerrillas had been largely dormant after the once 10,000-strong Shining Path was virtually eliminated in the 1990s.

But about 300 members of the Maoist-inspired group remain active in the area, funding themselves from the cocaine trade.

Hoping to eliminate them, Peru's military sent 1,000 troops to the region last month.

Its chief, Gen. Otto Guibovich, told The Associated Press last week that it was the first time troops have been dispatched to the region since the Shining Path's remnants moved there more than a decade ago.

The military's statement said the civilians were riding with soldiers in trucks that were returning to the Cochabamba Grande base in Huancavelica province when they were ambushed near the town of Tintaypunco.

Carlos Tapia, an expert on the Shining Path, told the AP he does not think Thursday's ambush indicates the group is resurgent.

"These Shining Path rebels are like those Japanese that continued fighting (the Second) World War on a few Pacific islands after Japan surrendered," he said.

In days prior to the ambush, one soldier and five rebels were killed in fighting in the area and 15 suspected guerrillas were captured, the military said.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed from 1980 to the mid-'90s in the Shining Path's brutal effort to impose a communist regime on Peru.

The insurgency was quashed by a democratically elected president, Alberto Fujimori. His rule ended in scandal in 2000, however, and he is now on trial for human rights violations.