BBC- Sixteen people, including at least two children, have been killed in a rebel attack in Peru, the country’s defence minister has confirmed.

The far-left Shining Path guerrilla group says it was behind the attack.

It left pamphlets at the scene ordering people not to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

The Maoist rebel group lost much of its power after the arrest of its leader in 1992 but remnants are still active in Peru’s coca-producing region.

The government says the Shining Path has since turned into a criminal group engaged in drug trafficking.

A local official said he had been alerted to an attack in the village of San Miguel del Ene on Sunday evening local time.

He said he found bodies strewn across the floor of two bars on opposite banks of a small river. He told local media that the bodies had bullet holes and that some of them, including those of two children, had been burned.

Initial reports spoke of 18 bodies, which was later revised down to 14. But Defence Minister Nuria Esparch said that following the arrival of the security forces at the site on Monday, she could confirm that 16 people had been killed.

Peru’s armed forces said that next to the bodies pamphlets signed by the Central Committee of the Militarised Communist Party of Peru – the official name of an offshoot of the Shining Path – had been found warning people not to vote in the upcoming presidential election on 6 June.

The pamphlets also said that the group would “clean” the area of “informants and traitors” and other “parasites”.