At least ten people were killed in two new massacres in southwest Colombia, rocked by a wave of violence unprecedented since the signing of the peace agreement with the former FARC guerrillas in 2016. Monday, four men were killed in the municipality of Mosquera, in the department of Nariño, local authorities told AFP.
According to a spokesperson, the bodies of the victims were found in the mangroves.
A local official also referred to a video that circulated on social media showing the suspected killers shooting the bodies of young men from a boat.
“Unfortunately, the wave of violence continues to increase in our department,”
lamented Nariño government official Francisco Ceron in a video sent to the media.
Six people, including a minor, were killed on Sunday in the neighboring department of Cauca.
An unidentified armed group shot at people attending a cockfight.
Several people, whose number was not specified, were also injured.
Read also: Insurrectionary climate in Colombia, 11 dead
In both cases, the police singled out dissidents from the former Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
These represent around 2,300 combatants who operate without a unified command.
The disarmament of the FARCs made it possible to reduce the intensity of the conflict, but the country remains confronted with the violence of the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last active guerrilla, as well as drug traffickers.
According to the independent Observatory Indepaz, 61 massacres have been recorded since early 2020 in the country.
According to a UN definition,
any assassination of at least three people perpetrated at the same time by the same perpetrator or group of perpetrators
is considered a
“massacre”
.
Read also: Colombia: where is the peace process with the Farc?
The departments of Nariño and Cauca are subject to rivalries between armed groups fighting for control of illegal mines, thousands of hectares of drug crops and access to drug routes across the Pacific to Central America and the United States.
Colombia's complex internal armed conflict has claimed more than nine million victims (dead, missing and internally displaced), according to official figures.