Friday 18 January 2013

Guerrillas kidnap five in northern Colombia

Five or more people were reported kidnapped in northern Colombia early on 18 January, it was suspected by guerrillas of the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), Europa Press reported citing army declarations. The five were employees of a mining or energy company and apparently kidnapped by a group of 25 guerrillas in the southern part of Bolívar, a department whose territory reaches the Caribbean coast. President Juan Manuel Santos was reported as having written on the website Twitter that the army had reacted and the guerrillas were already "within its range." Colombian troops were reported earlier as fighting the ELN in the Boyacá department south of Bolívar, and Europa Press observed the kidnapping followed by a day a gunfight there that killed an ELN guerrilla. Separately Colombia's police chief José Roberto León Riaño was reported as declaring the same day that police thwarted a suspected bid by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to strike at targets in and outside Bogotá when a two-month ceasefire is to end on 20 January. The FARC declared the unilateral ceasefire last November to coincide with ongoing negotiations with Colombian representatives in Havana. Police discovered grenades and 250 kilograms of explosives as well as diagrams of several installations - the suspected targets - in an unspecified location in the district of La Palma north of Bogotá. León said the find indicated the FARC were planning to blow up three police and military academies in Bogotá and in the district of Sibaté south-west of Bogotá, the broadcaster Caracol reported.

Nineteen reported killed around Mexico

Nineteen people or perhaps more including children were reported killed or found dead, in cases dismembered or beheaded, in incidents around Mexico on 16-17 January, Proceso reported. Two of these were identified as aged 15 and 17 and found shot dead late on 16 January in the northern district of Torreón. The bodies of three other young men were found very late on 17 January in Estado de México, by a road linking Mexico City and Puebla. They had been shot dead, La Jornada reported on 18 January, the daily observed that in total 33 were reported killed in that state during 14-17 January. In the south-eastern state of Tabasco a body was found in a burned car and provisionally identified as belonging to the missing former mayor of the district of Paraíso, Cristóbal Javier Ángulo. A member of the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party, Ángulo was mayor from 2010 to 2012 and apparently last seen on 16 January when he drove out of Paraíso toward the city of Villahermosa, Proceso reported. Three suspected criminals were reported gunned down by troops and police in the eastern port of Veracruz. A conservative politician, his wife and three-year-old son were gunned down late on 17 January in the central state of Morelos. Ignacio Domínguez Carranza had been a mayoral candidate of the National Action Party for the district of Tlalquiltenango where he died when armed men fired "hundreds of times" on his home from a convoy of cars, Proceso reported. The state governor deplored the crime and wrote on the website Twitter that the culprits would be punished. The daily El Universal separately reported that a man was killed in Mexico City on 16 January as he resisted a car theft.