At least nine people were killed in clashes between National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas and FARC dissidents in northeastern Colombia, a local administrative source learned on Monday.
Since this weekend there has been fighting in the town of Puerto Rondon, in the Arauca department, Wilinton Rodriguez, the governor of this region bordering Venezuela, told the press.
According to Rodriguez, they pit the ELN against the Central Staff (EMC) faction of the FARC dissident. The governor reported nine dead and five wounded, but did not say whether they were combatants or civilians.
The national press claims that the dead were militants.
According to images published by dissidents on social networks, the injured are ELN fighters, including an indigenous minor.
In this video from September 3, a local commander of the FARC dissident calls for government and ICRC intervention for the “humanitarian evacuation” of these wounded prisoners, who are sitting or lying on the ground covered in blood or with their limbs wrapped in medical bandages.
“There is an emergency (…) we cannot treat them because they are seriously injured (…) There are other prisoners who are fine, but we will find a way for them to return to their families. “ “adds this commander, identified as Antonio Medina, leader of the dissident Front 28.
“All of this is useless, this war is absurd,” he concludes.
Another video broadcast on social networks by channels sympathetic to the same group showed about ten automatic weapons and machine guns apparently confiscated from the ELN men.
The Guevarist-inspired ELN and the dissidents of the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), who reject the peace agreement signed with this Marxist guerrilla in 2016, are both in peace negotiations with the government of left-wing President Gustavo Petro.
The two groups, accused of involvement in drug trafficking and extortion, are traditional rivals and regularly clash in their respective spheres of influence. This rivalry is particularly intensified in Arauca, a historic stronghold of the ELN and hotbed of cross-border trade of all kinds.