Colombian rebels shot dead two policemen in one attack and wounded two soldiers with a horse packed with explosives in another on Sunday as Bogota vowed to beef up security in a violence-hit southwestern state.
Colombia has been battling leftist rebels for nearly five decades and while security has improved drastically over the last few years, illegal armed groups continue to stage bombings, hit-and-run attacks and other bloodshed.
Police said two officers were shot dead in the southwest state of Cauca on Sunday — the same province where a day before rebels detonated a car bomb, a bus bomb and another explosive device.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said that he was sending reinforcements of police, army and special forces to Cauca, an area plagued by drug and guerrilla violence.
Santos also said that Colombia would create another mountain battalion for the area.
“We’ve taken the measure that from now on, security personnel will destroy any house that is used by terrorists to attack government forces or civilians. No more utilizing houses to shoot at government forces or at civilians,” he said.
Local media also reported on Sunday that suspected Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels had detonated a horse packed with explosives, injuring two soldiers, in the southern province of Caqueta.
The security situation has worsened this year in the departments of Cauca, Caqueta, Norte de Santander, Arauca and Antioquia, according to the Colombian think tank Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris.
The attacks came a week after the leader of the FARC, Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, narrowly eluded capture by security forces. The FARC has stepped up violence recently in the world’s No. 1 cocaine producer.
Santos, who took office last August, has vowed to keep up former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s tough stance against left-wing rebels, paramilitary gangs and cocaine traffickers.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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