International News

BOGOTA, Aug 6, (APP/AFP) – A police officer was injured Sunday in
an attack on a UN mission monitoring the disarming of rebels in Colombia as part of its peace deal, authorities said.
Assailants attacked the location where the FARC rebel group had a
weapons stash in the southwestern town of Caloto, in Cauca department, according to police, who said a splinter group of the Marxist rebels or the smaller National Liberation Army could have been behind the violence.
But Cauca police general Edgar Rodriguez said the pro-Cuban ELN was
to blame. The ELN is currently the only group at arms in Colombia, though it is seeking to negotiate a peace deal.
The disarmament, mainly in June, by the roughly 7,000 members of
Colombia’s biggest rebel group under the 2016 peace accord brought a halt to the war.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for reaching the historic deal with the FARC. It was signed last November.
The conflict left a quarter of a million Colombians dead, about
60,000 unaccounted for and seven million displaced.
The FARC was born in May 1964 from a peasants’ revolt. Its ranks were
made up mostly of country dwellers who rallied behind the group’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, with land reform its focus.