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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Colombians flee to Venezuela as clashes between rebel groups escalate in coca-rich border region

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34 days ago
20250122
Residents cross a river to Venezuela from Colombia's Tibu, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, following guerrilla attacks that killed dozens and forced thousands to flee their homes in the Catatumbo region. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Residents cross a river to Venezuela from Colombia's Tibu, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, following guerrilla attacks that killed dozens and forced thousands to flee their homes in the Catatumbo region. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Fernando Vergara

The Colom­bian bor­der vil­lage of Tres Bo­cas has be­come a ghost town as res­i­dents flee to neigh­bor­ing Venezuela to es­cape a new wave of vi­o­lence in Colom­bia’s Cata­tum­bo re­gion that has left at least 80 peo­ple dead and dis­placed thou­sands.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, more than 18,000 peo­ple have fled the north­east­ern re­gion as fight­ing be­tween the Na­tion­al Lib­er­a­tion Army or ELN, and a ri­val group known as the FARC-EMC in­ten­si­fies. Of those who had fled, about 1,000 have sought shel­ter in Venezuela.

“Many of them are afraid of the fire­fights that have bro­ken out” in rur­al ar­eas, said Jaime Botero, pres­i­dent of a com­mu­ni­ty as­so­ci­a­tion in the town of Tibu, which is about 10 km (6 miles) to the west of Tres Bo­cas.

Lo­cat­ed on Colom­bia’s bor­der with Venezuela, the Cata­tum­bo re­gion has around 300,000 res­i­dents and pro­duces 15% of Colom­bia’s co­ca crop.

The FARC-EMC and the ELN have long bat­tled for con­trol of the re­gion and its lu­cra­tive drug traf­fick­ing routes, but had re­cent­ly held a truce.

But vi­o­lence es­ca­lat­ed last week when mem­bers of the ELN at­tacked civil­ians, ac­cus­ing them of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the FARC-EMC, with ELN rebels re­port­ed­ly drag­ging peo­ple out of their homes and shoot­ing them at close range.

Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro sus­pend­ed peace talks with the ELN on Fri­day, ac­cus­ing the rebels of com­mit­ting war crimes. On Mon­day night, Petro said he would is­sue an emer­gency de­cree that would en­able him to pass leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ed to the con­flict with­out con­gres­sion­al ap­proval.

U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res con­demned the killing of civil­ians, in­clud­ing for­mer com­bat­ants who signed the 2016 peace agree­ment, in the vi­o­lence, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. And he is con­cerned by the re­port­ed dis­place­ment of thou­sands of civil­ians.

“The sec­re­tary-gen­er­al calls for an im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of acts of vi­o­lence against the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion and for un­hin­dered hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­cess,” Haq said late Tues­day.

The Unit­ed Na­tions urged the ELN and oth­er armed groups in the Cata­tum­bo re­gion to re­spect civil­ians’ rights. The U.N. said that two hu­man rights de­fend­ers were killed last week.

Rue­da re­port­ed from Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia.

By FER­NAN­DO VER­GARA and MANUEL RUE­DA

TRES BO­CAS, Colom­bia (AP)


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