A senior commander of the Shining Path rebel group in Peru was killed Wednesday in a clash with the army, President Ollanta Humala said.

He identified the commander as Rolando Cabezas Figueroa, 43, and said he died in fighting in the southeast Ayacucho region.

Cabezas Figueroa, also known as "Comrade William", had been fighting for the Shining Path for 22 years and led units that attacked jungle military bases, the president said.

Peru's military largely crushed Shining Path in the mid-1990s, but some units remain active in the remote Apurimac and Ene River valley area.

Cabezas Figueroa was second-in-command of that rebel column, the president said.

Some 70,000 people were killed between 1980 and 2000 as the government battled the Shining Path and a rival leftist guerrilla group, the Tupac Amaru movement, according to Peru's independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission.