Five people have been killed in an attack believed to have been carried out by alleged rebels of the former Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) in Toumaco, southwestern Colombia, very close to the Ecuadorian border, the Colombian army said Sunday.
Gunmen opened fire on a “public institution”, killing two people on the spot, while three others succumbed to their injuries shortly after being taken to hospital, the army said in a press release.
Alleged to be FARC insurgents believed to belong to the Uriah Rodon unit, they “arrived at the facility by vehicle and started firing indiscriminately” at those present, according to the military.
Six other people were injured, the announcement said.
Another FARC insurgent group, the so-called Oliver Sinistera Front, also operates in the same area, as do the Contadores (“accountants”), a gang involved in drug trafficking.
One of the victims was under the age of 15, said Indepaz, an NGO that has counted 73 such attacks in Colombia since the beginning of the year.
Following the historic 2016 peace deal, which was supposed to turn the page on nearly six decades of civil strife between the armed forces and FARC guerrillas, hundreds of their members refused to lay down their arms.
Without a unified administration, the FARC insurgents are estimated to number about 2,500 warriors and are funded mainly by drug trafficking, illegal mining – especially gold – and blackmail, according to the Colombian military intelligence service.
The peace agreement allowed the demobilization of some 13,000 men and women who fought in the FARC, including some 7,000 men and women.
Nearly 300 of them have since died in targeted killings, which authorities attribute mainly to their former comrades-in-arms.
