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LATIN AMERICA |
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FARC Kills 5 Colombia Soldiers Eradicating
Coca Fields
BOGOTA -- Five soldiers were killed and two
others wounded by FARC guerrillas in the
jungle around Calamar, a town in southern
Colombia, the army said Sunday.
The soldiers were ambushed Saturday
afternoon while providing security for
peasants hired to manually eradicate coca
fields in La Paz, a village east of Calamar,
which is in Guaviare province.
The soldiers, who belonged to the army's 4th
Division, were protecting the peasants from
the 1st Front of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, military
spokesmen at the unit's headquarters in the
central city of Villavicencio said.
The FARC unit had been preventing residents
from eradicating the illegal crops under a
voluntary program, the army said.
"The terrorists, utilizing (gas) cylinders
packed with explosives in an indiscriminate
manner, murdered the soldiers who were
supporting the eradication work," the army
said.
A sergeant and a corporal were wounded in
the attack, the army said, adding that the
two men were taken to Bogota, where "they
are recovering."
A FARC guerrilla who allegedly carried out
more than two dozen bombings across Colombia
was arrested early Saturday in Bogota,
police said.
Edilberto Cruz Rubio was detained in Bosa, a
district in the southern section of the
capital, Dijin judicial police agency chief
Col. Luis Gilberto Ramirez said.
Cruz was trained in explosives and was known
to be an expert in bomb making among the
guerrillas, Ramirez said.
The guerrilla faces rebellion, terrorism and
murder charges in connection with 27
bombings, Ramirez said.
Cruz, who belonged to the FARC's 27th Front,
was in Bogota on a mission, Ramirez said.
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.
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