The Peruvian army has announced that it has rescued 39 people from the Maoist rebel group the Shining Path.

As reported by the BBC, the liberated were being kept as slave workers on a farm in the department of Junin in central Peru, some for as long as 30 years. According to the Ministry of Defence, 26 of the rescued were children; out of that number some were born into their captivity.

The rescue operation employed 120 Peruvian soldiers and required the use of four army helicopters. The freed people claimed they had been forced to work in fields. A rescued woman, who spoke to La Republica, said, "We've been here, like this, for 30 years." Some of the children held captive had been kidnapped from rural communities where their parents, afraid of retaliation from the guerrilla group, typically did not report their abduction.

Vice-Defence Minister Ivan Vega Loncharich said, "The aim of this operation was to rescue the people who were hostages of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in what is called a production camp." Loncharich explained the “production camps” were actually farms where "the children are gathered to work in agriculture and the women are expected to procreate and give birth to new rebels."

Reportedly the rebels told the children, who ranged in ages from 1 to 14 years old, the Peruvian army had come to kill them.

The Shining Path, which first came to worldwide attention in 1980, has been linked to the deaths of tens of thousands as well as the disappearance of thousands. As reported by the Guardian, Peru opened a museum of "historical memory" to commemorate the dead last year.

The bloody war between Peru and the Shining Path, which has resulted in the loss of 70,000 lives, was supposed to have ended back in 2000, but the remnants of the group continue fighting in an area known as VRAEM, where the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro River valleys meet.

Some photos from the raid posted on social media: