More than 80 people have been killed in fighting involving rebels from the leftwing National Liberation Army (ELN) in some of the worst violence to hit the country’s north-east region in recent years.
Twenty others have been injured, according to William Villamizar, governor of North Santander, where many of the killings occurred.
Thousands of people are fleeing the the Catatumbo region near the border with Venezuela, with some hiding in the nearby lush mountains or seeking help at government shelters.
“Catatumbo needs help,” Villamizar said in a public address. “Boys, girls, young people, teenagers, entire families are showing up with nothing, riding trucks, dump trucks, motorcycles, whatever they can, on foot, to avoid being victims of this confrontation.”
The violence comes after Colombia’s government suspended peace talks with the ELN on Friday, the second time it has done so in less than a year.
Fighting in recent days pitted rebels from the ELN – the biggest of the country’s active armed groups – against dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who refused to lay down their weapons in a 2016 peace deal.
The ELN had also clashed with the Clan del Golfo, a rightwing paramilitary force turned trafficking gang which is the country’s largest cocaine cartel.
For decades, armed groups have fought over control of ultra-lucrative coca plantations that dot the Colombia-Venezuela border region and which fuel the world’s cocaine habit.
The ELN said in a statement on Saturday that it had warned former FARC members that if they “continued attacking the population … there was no other way out than armed confrontation”. The ELN has accused ex-FARC rebels of several killings in the area, including the 15 January slaying of a couple and their nine-month-old baby.
Defense minister Iván Velásquez was scheduled to travel to the northeast town of Cúcuta while officials prepared to send 10 tons of food and hygiene kits for approximately 5,000 people in the communities of Ocaña and Tibú, the majority of them having fled the violence.
After he was elected in 2022, President Gustavo Petro launched negotiations with the ELN and other armed groups that still control parts of Colombia on a promise to pursue “total peace”.
But he paused the already-sputtering process with the ELN on Friday during the fresh wave of unrest, accusing the group of committing “war crimes”.
Associated Press and Agence France-Press contributed reporting
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