(Bogotá) An internal drug-trafficking showdown within a FARC dissident group left 12 people dead over the weekend in a rural area of western Colombia, authorities said Tuesday.
“Seven men and five women died in these events,” eight of whom belonged to the Jaime Martinez Front of the Central General Staff (EMC), the largest dissident group of the ex-FARC, which rejected the 2016 peace agreement, Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez said after a security council in the region.
According to residents, the events occurred on Sunday night in the town of Sagrada Familia, near the port of Buenaventura, in the department of Valle del Cauca, a region of the Pacific considered a drug trafficking corridor with a strong presence of the EMC and other armed groups.
Unverified videos circulating on social media showed the victims shot in the head while lying on the floor in a wooden house.
“It’s an internal struggle […]”It is probably due to disagreements over drug trafficking issues,” explained the commander of the armed forces, Admiral Francisco Cubides.
The leader “alias Pablo Villa ordered the assassination of some of his men who were about to negotiate cocaine with the ELN (National Liberation Army)”, another guerrilla present in the area, the officer explained.
According to authorities, the victims were dressed in civilian clothes and were unarmed.
A local NGO has warned that the upsurge in violence in the region has caused the “mass displacement” of 74 local Afro-Colombian communities.
The Jaime Martinez Front is a unit of the EMC, under the command of Ivan Mordisco, which withdrew from peace negotiations with the government of Gustavo Petro in mid-April.
According to military intelligence, about half of the 3,500 EMC fighters obey Ivan Mordisco. The rest remain involved in peace talks with the government.