At a Sunday protest against President Dina Boluarte’s government in the Puno region’s city of Ilave, soldiers said they were attacked by people armed with slingshots and sticks, according to the defense ministry.

The defense ministry reported on Monday that six Peruvian soldiers drowned after jumping into a freezing river while fleeing anti-government protesters in the south of the country.

The ministry reported the number of fatalities among soldiers who claimed to have been attacked by people armed with slingshots and sticks during a demonstration against President Dina Boluarte’s government on Sunday in the Puno region city of Ilave.

Since December, when then-president Pedro Castillo was ousted and arrested for attempting to dissolve parliament and rule by decree, Puno has been the epicenter of demonstrations. Boluarte’s resignation, new elections, a new constitution, and the dissolution of parliament are among the demands made by his supporters.

According to the country’s rights ombudsman, since then, there have been clashes that have resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people and the injuries of over 1,300 others, nearly half of whom are members of the security forces.

The soldiers’ bodies were found in the Ilave River, a lake Titicaca tributary near the Peru-Bolivia border.

A soldier who managed to escape said in a ministry video that he and his colleagues “crossed the river… because we had no other way out”

He sat among about a dozen other blanket-wrapped service members and stated, “Between 800 and 900 people surrounded us and started throwing stones at us.”

“People called us murderers and corrupt.”

“The current took us, and… some of the troops began to drown,” the soldier claimed of the men’s attempts to form a human chain.

Following the rescue of five soldiers from the river by locals, a Puno health care organization said on Sunday that it had treated them for hypothermia.

In clashes elsewhere in Puno on Saturday, 16 civilians and soldiers were injured, and a police station was set on fire.

Castillo, 53, is being held in pre-trial detention in Lima for 18 months on a rebellion charge. Several allegations of corruption were being looked into against him.

Poor Indigenous Peruvians in the southern part of the country are the driving force behind the demonstrations. They see Castillo, who is also of humble origin and has Indigenous roots, as an ally in their fight against poverty, racism, and inequality.

Castillo was elected for a five-year term, but when he was fired, he had only been in office for 17 months.

Since 2018, he was the fifth Peruvian president to be impeached before his term was up.