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15 brave Colombian soldiers ambushed by FARC cowards

There deaths will be avenged!I pray for the families so close to Christmas.We will triumph!

BOGOTA, Colombia - Government troops have retaken control of an area in southern Colombia where leftist rebels ambushed and killed 15 soldiers, the president said Sunday.

The soldiers were ambushed Saturday after the military learned guerrillas planned to seize the remote hamlet of La Julia, 100 miles south of the capital.

"This hurts immensely and that's why we must get rid of forever the drug trade which is financing these terrorists," President Alvaro Uribe said. He spoke before boarding a plane to visit troops in the northeastern state of Norte de Santander, another area hard hit by guerrilla violence.

After the military received warnings of the impending assault on La Julia, a mobile army unit from the U.S.-trained Omega Force was dispatched Saturday to the area.

The area is the main stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said Gen. Freddy Padilla, chairman of Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said his troops were surprised by the rebels.

Among the soldiers killed were two junior officers, said Padilla, who traveled to the area Sunday.

The FARC has been trying to overthrow Colombia's government for almost a half-century. After being pursued the past four years by Uribe's military — the main recipient of $700 million in annual U.S. aid — FARC's numbers are believed to have dwindled to about 11,000 fighters.

Despite significant losses, the guerrillas have intensified their offensive since Uribe, Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America, was elected to a second four-year term in May.

On Nov. 1, guerrillas killed 17 police officers with makeshift mortars fired on a police station in the town of Tierradentro, 230 miles northwest of Bogota.

The guerrillas also were blamed for a car bombing Oct. 19 at a military university in Bogota, which injured 23 people. The vehicle exploded a few feet from where Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the army, was giving a speech to foreign dignitaries.

Before Thursday's deadly ambush, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said 575 members of the security forces were killed in 2006 by guerrilla attacks, 10 percent fewer than in 2005.

By Giann on Dec 25, 2006, 18:13 in Politics & the war.

goin_south says on Dec 25, 2006, 18:48:

Some comments, please, from those who understand more General Freddie Padilla said "his troops were surprised by the rebels."
This journalistic report makes little sense, to me. "They had received warnings of the impending assault", yet they were "ambushed", it says.
And, they were members of some (implied) Special (Omega) Forces,...US-trained.

I don't understand why they don't work with some sort of infra-red detection devices. Maybe that is the wrong word or wrong technology. I seems to me, in this day of hi-tech war, a travesty that they should have been 'surprised', especially considering they 'had been warned.'

What's up? Those that know alot more about Colombian Army capabilities than me. (I know nothing.) But, I am continually surprised at these types of sustained losses. I am surprised they don't have the equipment TO KNOW ALMOST EXACTLY WHERE THESE GUYS are at.

Farcs numbers... around 11,000. I think we have been reading that number for the past two years that I have been reading about Colombia. It seems, as I wrote a few days ago, that the Immense change brought about during the first two and a half years that Uribe was president, has immensely slowed the past two years, in equal measure.

Juancegomez, our well-informed and well-thought-out, analytical Colombian Statesman... what's up?

Ciao! Gustav.

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 06:02:

galecito This is all pretty speculative, up to a point...but here's what I can make out, including what has been published today in the local press:

1. The military learned that the guerrillas were planning to assault the town of La Julia.

2. The military sent troops, with air support included, to intercept the guerrillas. Who actually shot first is entirely a matter of debate (and of press interpretations), but let's assume that the guerrillas managed to notice the approaching soldiers before they saw the insurgents.

3. The military had a confirmed loss of 14-15 men, and the guerrillas themselves may potentially have as many as 40 casualties, but that is unconfirmed (as is usually the case, because they tend to take away both their dead and wounded most of the time). What is completely clear is that the guerrillas did not actually assault La Julia.

One fact though, is there are no "Special (Omega) Forces" strictly speaking .

The entire Task Force that's operating in the (until recently) "Plan Patriota" area is labelled as "Omega" (Fuerza de Tarea Omega). Some 14-18,000 men are part of it.

It's quite likely that most of the soldiers in it have some sort of U.S. training, and probably better equipment, but that doesn't equate all of them with "Special Forces", though some of those are also probably included in it.

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Sr Tertius says on Dec 26, 2006, 08:58:

Praying for peace? "There deaths will be avenged!I pray for the families so close to Christmas.We will triumph!"

Thanks for reminding me the hypocritical side of religion.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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Sr Tertius says on Dec 26, 2006, 09:14:

Not an ambush, says General Padilla It was combat: There was, according to him, no surprise. Of course, the only version we have is from the military, of whom I believe, at best, half of what they say.

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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Giann says on Dec 26, 2006, 10:03:

Yes a prayer for peace.They are a cancer and have killed my relatives.They wish for Communist control of Colombia.This will not stand.They are god less.

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 10:59:

Sr Tertius Which is part of why I wouldn't totally rule out that there in fact was an ambush, but there's really no way to confirm it anyways, for those of us that are merely external observers with no access to the actual events.

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Giann says on Dec 26, 2006, 13:17:

What I think I would say it was a ambush.Even the simplest of military training will tell you in a engagement to break off contact and get out of the kill zone as possible.The FARC most likely were waiting for hours with explosives and machine gun nest for some patrol to walk down a passable route in the jungle.Just my observation take it as you will.

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:07:

Giann Your opinion is valid, just as that of any of us. However, it most likely wasn't simply a regular patrol passing by and falling into a trap, at least from what little we know and what little else we can assume. Obviously, this is only an opinion too.

If the FARC were going to attack La Julia, for real or hypothetically, one single military patrol sure as heck wasn't going to be enough to stop them, so the engagement probably was on a somewhat larger scale than the number of casualties on one side (the only side we have some sort of access to) implies.

It's likely that both the military and the FARC had much more than 15 or 30 men each in the area. At least somewhere in low hundreds (200, for example), if I were to make a reasonable guess.

Even if the FARC possibly had prepared traps in the area (the exact composition and details of which none of us know), the soldiers were expecting to fight, not simply to "patrol". So the ambush, if it happened, wasn't entirely unexpected in operational terms, even if it was tactically surprising.

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:09:

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:09:

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:10:

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utopiacowboy says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:21:

It's deja vu all over again. We always seem to be reading stories like this and it just continues year after year after year. Their deaths will be avenged? I doubt it. We will triumph? I doubt that too.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

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juancegomez says on Dec 26, 2006, 14:40:

UTC Well yeah. It's a war after all, and we're always going to be reading stories like this because the media, and especially the foreign media (there's at least more variety in the national one), mostly cares for such stories in the first place (XX soldiers killed, XX destroyed, XX dead and wounded, etc.).

It's not so much "deja vu" per se as it is the natural consequence of warfare: People on both sides are going to be killed as long as the conflict continues. Sometimes there'll be ambushes, other times there'll be other kinds of engagements and so forth.

The deaths may not be directly avenged, on a case by case basis, but then again, any blow to the FARC or even any guerrilla killed can be counted as form of vengeance, if that's your thing. It's not mine though, but that's one way of looking at it, if you wish to do so. From that particular point of view, any casualties that the guerrillas themselves suffered during the engagement would also count towards it.

As for triumph, that's a much longer term prospect, either way.

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goin_south says on Dec 26, 2006, 15:12:

that's a much longer term prospect? para siempre? or, at least, the rest of my life; maybe yours. I would hope not.

Ciao! Gustav.

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Giann says on Dec 26, 2006, 19:37:

True It could have been a heated battle.Another article stats prior to the soldiers being killed other units already made contact with FARC troops that were massing.

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