| |
 |
Colombian gunmen abduct 190 farm workers
|
SUSPECTED right-wing gunmen abducted about 190 farm labourers, including children, as they were being bused home from work at a plantation in rural eastern Colombia, the army said on Wednesday.
In one of the biggest mass kidnaps in Colombia's violent recent history, armed men dressed in camouflage forced workers off their vehicles on Tuesday afternoon as they travelled home, said Gen Ramiro Bautista, head of the army's 16th Brigade.
Hildebrando Leon, mayor of the town of Villanueva, said the gunmen had singled out men and women under the age of 28. Those abducted included 53 minors and one woman, the army said.
A military unit rushed to the area near the El Palmar plantation in Casanare Province in the tropical lowlands, said General Fernando Tapias, the armed forces commander.
Efforts to retrieve the hostages
"The 16th Brigade in Casanare and the 7th Brigade in Meta are co-ordinating to find this group, which is fleeing with its hostages, and free them," Tapias told reporters, adding that the gunmen appeared to be right-wing paramilitary outlaws.
He said later that they had taken about 190 prisoners.
Soldiers have captured two men who were driving trucks used by the gunmen, Tapias said. They were due to be interrogated.
Paramilitaries -- funded partly by landowners, partly by traffic in cocaine -- target suspected rebel sympathizers. The government says they have killed over 500 people this year.
They have been responsible for many of the worst cases of brutality in Colombia's 37-year-old, three-way war, which pits leftist rebels against the outlawed far-right vigilantes and the armed forces. About 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict in the last decade alone.
Eightfold increase
Fuelled by frustration at the military's failure to defeat the rebels, paramilitary numbers grew from fewer than 1,000 in 1992 to some 8,000 in 2000, according to government figures.
Legal officials speculated the paramilitaries in Villanueva could be trying to forcibly recruit labourers into their ranks or else put pressure on locals to pay extortion money.
Tuesday's incident was the second mass abduction this year in Colombia. A Cuban-inspired guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), seized 100 employees of US oil company Occidental Petroleum as they were being bused back from work at a jungle oil field in April. The ELN freed them within days.
Colombia has by far the highest rate of kidnappings in the world, with almost 4,000 taking place in 2000.
|
|
|
|
