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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Colombia Army Kills Five More Rebels as Conflict Heats Up |
| 2014-01-23 |
| [An Nahar] Colombian troops killed five FARC guerrillas Wednesday in the latest in a succession of military operations that have claimed the lives of 26 leftist rebels since the weekend, a military source said. The flare-up comes despite peace talks in Havana aimed at ending the 50-year-old insurgency and as the FARC denounced the killing of leftist activists. The military source said Wednesday's fighting was in the central department of Meta where an army operation resulted in the deaths of five guerrillas and the capture of eight others. On Tuesday, the army reported seven guerrillas killed in a separate operation in the department of Tolima, also in the central part of the country. And 14 guerrillas were killed over the weekend in an army air and ground assault on a rebel base in a rural region near Venezuela, the army said. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has vowed to keep the pressure on the FARC even as his government pursues peace talks with the group in Havana. "The offensive continues," he said Wednesday during an official visit to Spain. "But at the same time we seek to negotiate so that all this violence, which has bloodied the country for 50 years, will be set aside and we can continue to grow without violence," he added. Santos expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... that the grinding of the peace processor might yet be derailed. "What concerns me is that they might commit an irrational act, an attack against a very important person, something that would shatter the process into a thousand pieces," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred |