Members of the Shining Path rebel movement in Peru are holding around 20 prison officials hostage, following an uprising on Sunday at a maximum security jail.

About 300 soldiers and police have surrounded Yanamayo prison, which lies 3,870m (12,700 ft) up in the Andes mountains.

The government says the rebels killed a fellow inmate after he tried to stop the hostage-taking.

There are unconfirmed reports of conflict within the prison between Shining Path and another left-wing Peruvian group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

A police guard was also killed in a three-hour clash on Sunday when security forces tried but failed to rescue the hostages, military sources say.

Meeting

Attempts are being made to open negotiations with the prisoners, who could be heard shouting that they wanted to hold a meeting with Abimael Guzman, the Shining Path's founder.

Guzman, who launched the Maoist movement's war to impose a communist state, is now serving a life sentence at a naval base near Lima.

A prisoner interviewed by mobile phone on a Chilean radio station said the rioters want representatives of the Red Cross, the national Ombudsman, and the justice and interior ministries to come to the prison.

He said tension at the prison was so high that anything might happen, and denounced bad prison conditions, including poor food and sanitation.

It was not known if the hostage-takers have guns, although they were thought to have knives made in the jail as well as iron bars.

'Inhumane'

Yanamayo holds around 300 inmates from Peru's rebel groups - Shining Path and the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

MRTA spokesman Isaac Velazco told Reuters by telephone from Germany that the police "hostages" were in fact trapped inside an MRTA wing, where they had taken refuge during the violence.

Mr Velazco said the MRTA inmates opposed the riot but their wing's exits were apparently controlled by the Shining Path group.

Military sources denied this account.

The MRTA has repeatedly warned that Peruvian security forces might provoke a riot at Yanamayo to give them an excuse to violently quell protesters.

Human rights groups and rebel spokesmen label Peru's guerrilla jail system "inhumane".

Inmates receive poor diets and spend about 23 hours a day in small, cold, dimly lit cells that typically have a hole in the concrete floor serving as a toilet, they say.