Thirteen miners have been found dead inside a mine in Peru after being kidnapped several days earlier. They were working at a gold mine owned by Peruvian mining company Poderosa, which is based in Pataz province, north of the capital Lima.

Much of Peru is awash in a wave of crime that prompted the government to declare a state of emergency last month​.

Poderosa, the Peruvian company that owns and operates the mine in the northwestern city of Pataz, confirmed the deaths of the guards after a police search and rescue unit recovered their bodies. “Poderosa laments the death of the 13 workers that were cruelly murdered by criminals allied with illegal mining”,