(Bogotá) Clashes between a dissident FARC guerrilla faction and another armed group have left 18 dead in southwestern Colombia, near the border with Ecuador, the Colombian Ombudsman announced on Sunday.
On Saturday, “18 men were killed in a confrontation between the self-proclaimed ‘Comandos de la Frontera’ and the ‘Carolina Ramírez’ first front of the FARC dissidents”, according to a bulletin published by the public human rights watchdog. , without specifying whether they are civilian or military victims.
The clashes erupted in a rural area of the municipality of Puerto Guzmán, some 60 kilometers from the Ecuadorian border.
The Ombudsman requested “the presence of the security forces and the public prosecutor in the area”.
The “Carolina Ramirez” front belongs to the largest faction that withdrew from the peace pact that disarmed the FARC in 2017, according to local press.
The organization had contact with representatives of President Gustavo Petro as part of a preliminary phase to peace talks and had announced that it would reduce attacks on security forces in order to reach a ceasefire. bilateral fire in Colombia.
The “Comandos de la Frontera” are an armed group that controls the drug trafficking routes in the jungle on the border with Ecuador.
The dissidents of the FARC are part of an amalgam of armed groups with which the government of President Petro intends to renew dialogue to achieve its objective of “total peace” throughout the country.
In total, these armed groups have about 5,200 members distributed in the different regions of the country without a single command, according to the Indepaz study center.
Reconciliations
Colombia has suffered more than half a century of armed conflict between the state and various groups of left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
President Gustavo Petro, who in August became the country’s first left-wing leader, has pledged to take a less belligerent approach to ending the violence perpetrated by armed groups.
On Monday, his government will resume peace talks with ELN guerrillas in Caracas, Venezuela, after a nearly four-year suspension.
Founded in 1964 by trade unionists and students who sympathized with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Cuban revolution, the ELN remains to this day the only constituted guerrilla group still active in Colombia.
According to the authorities, the ELN currently has some 2,500 members and is mainly present in the Pacific region and on the border with Venezuela, which is 2,200 kilometers long.
Antonio Garcia, the commander-in-chief of the ELN, stressed in October that the way to achieve peace is “to address the causes of armed conflict, which are inequality, lack of democracy, inequity “.