Colombian army kills FARC guerrillas, politician shot

Troops shot dead seven fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and arrested another in fighting on 4-5 May in the south-western Colombian department of Nariño, agencies reported, citing army declarations. The armed-forces commander for south-western Colombia General Leonardo Barrero Gordillo said the fighting was against the FARC's Front 29 in the locality of Leyva, on the frontier between the departments of Nariño and Cauca, Spain's EFE reported on 5 May. Barrero described this as the "fourth blow" this year against Front 29, which he said had lost 58 men in 2013 in deaths, arrests and desertions. In separate incidents a member of a Christian political party and a land claimant were killed in the northern departments of César and Antioquia. The Minister of Agriculture Juan Camilo Restrepo Salazar condemned on 5 May the killing that day of Iván Restrepo García, one of the many Colombians reclaiming properties from which they were expelled in past years, in areas of Colombia affected by conflict or insecurity. Land grabbers in such cases were generally suspected to be paramilitaries, gangsters or communist guerrillas. The government has begun a programme to restore such lands and Restrepo was reportedly registered as claimant to a plot of land in the Bello district in Antioquia. He was shot in his house there, in spite of unspecified protective measures given him by the state, RCN La Radio reported. The Minister wrote on the website Twitter that land restitution policies would continue "with determination" in spite of "sharpshooters" and "regardless of who the despoiler was," RCN radio reported. Unidentified gunmen also shot dead Gustavo Briceño, a member of MIRA (Movimiento Independiente de Renovación Absoluta), a small, independent party, at an unspecified date in Valledupar in César. Briceño was a pre-candidate for Senate elections in 2014, Agence France-Presse reported.