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Since the early hours of Saturday, dissidents from the defunct FARC and drug traffickers have been holding strong clashes for territorial control.
The clashes between illegal armed groups in the Inda Sabaleta reservation, which belongs to the Awá indigenous community, in Tumaco, Nariño department, left at least five dead, two wounded and two missing.
Of the total number of deaths, one belonged to the original community, three were from the community councils and one was not an inhabitant of the place, explained María Emilsen Angulo, mayor of Tumaco, to the press.
With regard to the disappeared, one of them is 19 years old and is a member of the La Brava Community Council and the other does not live in that indigenous territory.
“Fear reigns”
Initially, it was reported that 40 members of the Awá people had been kidnapped, but Angulo denied this information and asserted that so far there are no displaced residents in the neighboring towns of Llorente and Tumaco.
However, the ‘José Alvear Restrepo’ Lawyers’ Collective on its website assures that this has not been corroborated, because there is fear in the population for possible reprisals from armed groups. “Fear reigns and international humanitarian presence is urgently needed“says the text.
In an Army statement released in the media, it is explained that a group of soldiers moved to the area where members of the ‘Oliver Sinisterra’ front, of the dissidents of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and ‘Los Contadores’, made up of drug traffickers, had been facing each other since the early hours of last Saturday.
The commander of the Suroccidente Joint Command Number 2, Álvaro Vicente Pérez Durán, reported that they had a fight with one of the armed organizations and that the seizure of war material was carried out, explosives and coca base paste.
Two teenagers were rescued
For its part, the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) announced in a statement that two adolescents, one of them Venezuelan, were rescued after the clashes. Protection measures were issued to both.
These events occurred one month after the massacre of three members of that indigenous community and the murder of nine young people in the Samaniego municipality of that department.
The risk faced by the Awá people has been recognized by the Colombian judicial system since 2004, given the violence of armed groups that generated forced displacements and the presence of illicit crops, which reach some 10,000 hectares.
