At least 34 government soldiers have been kidnapped by armed civilians in a jungle in southeastern Colombia after clashes that killed 11 fighters, including a commander of a dissident faction of the former FARC rebel group, Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez says.
The fighting occurred on Sunday in a rural part of the El Retorno municipality in the province of Guaviare and involved members of the Central General Staff (EMC), a group of former fighters with the left-wing FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.
Sanchez said on Tuesday that the soldiers were taken as they were evacuating the area after a military operation that killed an EMC commander and 10 other rebels.
“This is an illegal, criminal action by people in civilian clothing,” Sanchez told reporters. “This is a kidnapping.”
The jungle region is considered a strategic corridor for drug trafficking and is known for its extensive coca crops, the main ingredient used to produce cocaine.
It followed a similar abduction in June when the army said 57 soldiers were seized by civilians in a southwestern mountainous area, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.
The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the EMC, the main FARC dissident group.
Armed groups – which fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes – remain present in Colombia after a six-decade conflict that has killed more than 450,000 people despite the peace deal with the FARC nine years ago when it was Colombia’s largest rebel group.
Last week, at least 18 people were killed and dozens injured in two attacks attributed to dissident FARC factions.
In Cali, the country’s third most populous city, a vehicle packed with explosives detonated on Thursday near a military aviation school, killing six people and injuring 71, according to the mayor’s office.
Hours earlier, a National Police Black Hawk helicopter participating in a coca crop eradication operation was downed by a drone in the municipality of Amalfi in the department of Antioquia, killing 12 police officers.
President Gustavo Petro blamed the attacks on dissident factions of FARC.
