Attacks by rebel ELN fighters in the Catatumbo region have forced thousands of people to flee the area.
More than 80 people have been killed in just three days in northeast Colombia following failed attempts to hold peace talks with the rebel National Liberation Army (ELN), an official has said.
The ELN launched an assault in the northeastern Catatumbo region last Thursday on a rival group comprised of ex-members of the now-defunct FARC armed group who kept fighting after it disarmed in 2017.
Civilians were trapped in the middle, and by Sunday, it was estimated that “more than 80 people have lost their lives,” said Governor William Villamizar of the Norte de Santander department that includes Catatumbo.
The last toll on Saturday was estimated at 60 people, including seven former fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in five municipalities of the mountainous cocaine-producing region near the border with Venezuela.
Among the victims are community leader Carmelo Guerrero and seven people who sought to sign a peace deal, according to a report that a government ombudsman agency released late on Saturday.
Thousands of people are fleeing the area, with some hiding in the nearby lush mountains or seeking help at government shelters.
Villamizar said about two dozen people had been injured and some 5,000 displaced in the outbreak of violence, and described the resulting humanitarian situation as “alarming”.
“Catatumbo needs help,” Villamizar said in a public address on Saturday.
“Boys, girls, young people, teenagers, entire families are showing up with nothing, riding trucks, dump trucks, motorcycles, whatever they can, on foot, to avoid being victims of this confrontation.”
The army said more than 5,000 soldiers have been sent to the region to “reinforce security”.
Army commander General Luis Emilio Cardozo Santamaria said on Saturday that authorities were reinforcing a humanitarian corridor between Tibu and Cucuta for the safe passage of those forced to flee their homes. He said special urban soldiers also were deployed to municipal capitals “where there are risks and a lot of fear”.
The FARC disarmed under a 2016 peace deal reached after more than half a century of war.
However, the pact failed to extinguish the violence involving leftist groups, including FARC holdouts, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels over resources and trafficking routes in some regions of the country.
The ELN has accused ex-FARC rebels of several killings in the area, including the January 15 slaying of a couple and their nine-month-old baby.
In a statement on Saturday, the ELN said it had warned former FARC members that if they “continued attacking the population … there was no other way out than armed confrontation”.
The ELN has in recent days also clashed with the Gulf Clan, the largest drug cartel in the world’s biggest cocaine producer, leaving at least nine dead in a different part of northern Colombia.
The latest violence prompted President Gustavo Petro on Friday to call off negotiations with the ELN in his pursuit of “total peace” for the violence-riddled country.