After the murder of five indigenous people in Colombia, President Iván Duque has announced the deployment of 2500 soldiers. He will have a troupe work in the southwestern region of Cauca within 40 days, he wrote on Twitter. Their mission was to better control the area, close drug trafficking routes and smash criminal organizations.
The victims of the massacre were members of an organization responsible for security in the indigenous areas of Colombia, the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) said. The raid occurred when members of the Nasa people conducted controls in a reserve. Accordingly, dissidents of the Farc guerilla drove up in a car and opened the fire.
Among the dead was a NASA leader. There were also five injured. Also on an ambulance, which transported the victims, had been shot, it was said.
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The Farc rebels had fought for half a century against the government in Bogotá. More than 260,000 people were killed in the conflict. At the end of 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace agreement with Farc to end the decades-long civil war.
But there are still groups of Farc dissidents active who reject the agreement. In August, several former rebel commanders announced they would resume the fight against the government. In guerilla-abandoned areas, criminal gangs have also advanced. Indigenous groups are increasingly facing violent attacks by armed drug gangs.
The right-wing conservative President Duque, who has been in power since August 2018, called for a hunt for the rebels. On Wednesday, he traveled to Cauca together with commanders of the military and the police chief of the South American country to assess the security situation after the massacre.
In the video: Guerillas in Colombia - In the realm of the Comandante
Federico Rios / THE MIRROR