Latest news with #ValleDelCauca
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
At least 7 killed in explosions and attacks outside police stations in southwest Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Seven people, including two police officers, were killed in Colombia on Tuesday, as rebel groups detonated bombs near police stations in the city of Cali and the neighboring Cauca province, Colombia's National Police said in a statement. Military and police spokespeople blamed the attacks on the FARC-EMC, a group led by former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who broke away from the group after it signed a peace deal with the government in 2016. Authorities said the rebels placed bombs in cars and motorcycles that were parked near police stations, while also waging some attacks with gunfire and grenades. Colombia's police said there were a total of 24 attacks on Tuesday in the city Cali and the surrounding provinces of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, in which 28 people were also injured, including 19 civilians. The attacks on the police stations come just days after Miguel Uribe, a conservative presidential candidate, was shot during a rally in Bogota. Authorities say they are investigating who was behind the attack on Uribe, who is in a critical condition in hospital in Bogota. Colombia's government has struggled to contain violence in urban and rural areas as several rebel groups try to take over territory abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia following its peace deal with the government. Peace talks between the FARC-EMC faction and the government broke down last year after a series of attacks on indigenous communities. The government is currently holding talks with another faction of the group, that is led by commander Luis Alberto Alban, known also as Marcos Calarca. ____ Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at Associated Press, The Associated Press
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Colombia violence: Kidnapped boy, 11, released after 18 days
An 11-year-old Colombian boy has been reunited with his family 18 days after he was kidnapped by members of a dissident rebel group. Five armed men wearing balaclavas stormed the boy's home in a rural area of Valle del Cauca province on 3 May and seized him and a domestic released the employee soon after but held the boy in a shack at a remote location for almost three weeks until they agreed his freedom in negotiations with Colombia's ombudsman's office, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church. Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy's abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals. Police said that the kidnappers were part of the Frente Jaime Martínez, an off-shoot of the Farc rebel group that continued fighting after Farc agreed a 2016 peace boy's mother described his release as "a miracle", adding that the weeks he had been in captivity had been "horrible, a nightmare".Many dissident rebel groups such as the Frente Jaime Martínez finance themselves through extortion and kidnappings for ransom, as well as drug trafficking. The commander of the regional police force, Brigadier General Carlos Oviedo, said the boy's stepfather had been the real target of the kidnappers, but that they had seized the boy when they found that the stepfather was not at stepfather, a local merchant, told local media that he was not involved in any illicit business and said he did not know why he had been is not clear if a ransom was paid for the boy's stepfather said the boy had told the family that he had been shackled for the first four days of his captivity but was in good health. His mother said that her son appeared anxious and that he had bitten his fingernails down. He was taken to the local hospital for examination. The mayor of Jamundí, the town where the family lives, thanked the local community "for not giving up" and for holding rallies demanding the boy's release. Colombia's vice-president, Francia Márquez, had also demanded that the boy be freed. "Ife is sacred and the freedom of any human being is non-negotiable, less so when it's that of a child," she wrote in a statement.
