 |
LATIN AMERICA |
| |
FARC Guerrillas
Attack Plane Carrying 15 in Colombia
BOGOTA – Suspected members of the FARC
guerrilla group opened fire on a plane
carrying 15 people that had just taken off
from an airport in the southwestern province
of Guaviare, wounding one of the people
aboard, Colombian media reported.
The DC-3 came under fire from Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
guerrillas, who fled after the attack,
Caracol Noticias television said.
The plane was heading from Miraflores to San
Jose del Guaviare, the provincial capital,
when it was attacked, Caracol Noticias said.
A bullet hit the plane’s fuselage, causing
an interior panel to fall off and injure a
female passenger.
The plane’s other occupants were not hurt in
the attack.
The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and largest
leftist guerrilla group, was founded in
1964, has an estimated 8,000 to 17,000
fighters and operates across a large swath
of this Andean nation.
President Alvaro Uribe’s administration has
made fighting the FARC a top priority and
has obtained billions in U.S. aid for
counterinsurgency operations.
The FARC, whose leader is Alfonso Cano,
suffered a series of blows last year.
On July 2, 2008, the Colombian army rescued
former presidential candidate Ingrid
Betancourt, U.S. military contractors Thomas
Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves,
and 11 other Colombian police officers and
soldiers.
The FARC had been trying to trade the 15
captives, along with 25 other
“exchangeables,” for hundreds of jailed
guerrillas.
The rebels’ most valuable bargaining chip
was Betancourt, a dual Colombian-French
citizen the FARC seized in February 2002
whose plight became a cause celebre in
Europe.
The guerrilla group is believed to still be
holding some 700 hostages.
FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, who was known
as “Sureshot,” died on March 26, 2008.
Three weeks earlier, Colombian forces staged
a cross-border raid into Ecuador, killing
FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes and
setting off a regional diplomatic crisis.
Ivan Rios, a high-level FARC commander, was
killed that same month by one of his own
men, who cut off the guerrilla leader’s hand
and presented it to army troops, along with
identification documents, as proof that the
rebel chief was dead.
A succession of governments have battled
Colombia’s leftist insurgent groups since
the mid-1960s.
The origin of Colombia’s civil strife dates
back to 1948, when the assassination of
popular politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan
sparked a 10-year-long civil war known as
“La Violencia.”
About six years after that conflict ended
with a power-sharing pact between Colombia’s
two main parties, a government offensive
against peasant self-defense groups led
Marulanda, who was pursued by death squads
during La Violencia, to form the FARC.
In 1999, then-President Andres Pastrana
allowed the creation of a Switzerland-sized
“neutral” zone in the jungles of southern
Colombia for peace talks with the FARC.
After several years of fitful and ultimately
fruitless negotiations, Pastrana ordered the
armed forces to retake the region in early
2002. But while the arrangement lasted, the
FARC enjoyed free rein within the zone.
The FARC is on both the U.S. and EU lists of
terrorist groups. Drug trafficking,
extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom are the
FARC’s main means of financing its
operations. EFE |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
