Colombia says rebels in Ecuador launch new attack

Colombia says rebels in Ecuador launch new attack 26 Mar 2008 21:57:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
BOGOTA, March 26 (Reuters) - Marxist rebels hiding in Ecuador launched explosives at Colombian anti-cocaine workers across the border, Colombia's government said on Wednesday, increasing already high tensions between the Andean neighbors.

The guerrillas shot makeshift bombs made from cooking gas cylinders at coca eradicators last week as they pulled up the illicit plants on Colombian territory, Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo said.

"No government can stand by with its arms crossed while its citizens are being attacked from the other side of the border," Araujo said. "We ask the Ecuadorean authorities to please help us. We should each coordinate security in our own territory."

No one was killed in the incident but Colombia complains that neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela do not do enough to help combat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which funds its four-decade-old insurgency with the cocaine trade and has set up camps inside Ecuadorean territory.

Colombia sparked as regional crisis on March 1 when it bombed a FARC camp inside Ecuador, killing a top guerrilla leader and more than 20 other rebel fighters.

The leftist governments of Ecuador and Venezuela responded to the raid by sending troops to their Colombian borders.

The crisis was quickly defused and the three countries agreed to work together, but tensions are still simmering between Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, and his Ecuadorean and Venezuelan counterparts.

The FARC has a strong presence along Colombia's 360-mile (580-km) border with Ecuador. Colombia started paying local peasants in the area to manually destroy coca plants after Ecuador complained that the U.S.-financed spraying of herbicides was damaging the environment on Ecuador's side. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Kieran Murray)

By DodgerDogs on Mar 26, 2008, 16:04 in Politics & the war.

DodgerDogs says on Mar 26, 2008, 16:07:

Do you think Colombia, should be allowed to launch a cross border attack to defend it self ?

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.Martin Luther King:

Sam Salmon says on Mar 26, 2008, 17:56:

FARC is playing a dangerous game-they are desperate and factions within the organisation are acting independently-this is reminiscent of the goons who kidnapped those tourists near Bahia Solano just after the first hostage release and murdered them all.

' a la orden!'

durito says on Mar 26, 2008, 18:05:

"this is reminiscent of the goons who kidnapped those tourists near Bahia Solano just after the first hostage release and murdered them all."

They did not kill any of them. They released four a few weeks later and kept 2 (1 being the half Norwegian).

You are confusing the separate story where they found the bodies of several kidnapping victims that had been killed years earlier in the same area.

robi666 says on Mar 26, 2008, 18:21:

I heard the same, durito. I thought I was wrong.

"I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present."

durito says on Mar 26, 2008, 18:37:

Liberados cuatro turistas secuestrados en Nuquí

Por
Rodrigo Martínez Arango

A una comisión de la Cruz Roja Internacional, CICR, guerrilleros de las Farc entregaron a cuatro de las seis personas secuestradas el 13 de enero pasado cuando visitaban un balneario en la ensenada de Tribugá, municipio de Nuquí, costa del Pacífico en Chocó.

En las selvas de la serranía del Baudó los insurgentes dejaron en libertad a la bióloga Ana María Aldana Serrano, César Hoyos Benítez, Hernando Martínez Rodríguez y José Arnulfo Rodríguez Barrera, quienes fueron trasladados en lancha al municipio de Quibdó.

Quedaron en poder de las Farc, el profesor de la Universidad de los Andes de origen noruego Alf Onshus Niño �?ngel y Jorge Alejandro Torres.

El secuestro de estos turistas causó preocupación en el comercio y el gremio hotelero tanto de Nuquí como de Bahía Solano.

Para iniciar su búsqueda, la infantería de Marina instaló un puesto de mando adelantado en el municipio de Nuquí, al mando del comandate de esa fuerza en el Pacífico coronel Héctor Aguas.

Los militares asumieron el control de la zona turística y obligaron a los guerrilleros a replegarse hacia la zona selvática.

goin_south says on Mar 26, 2008, 23:20:

dog.. I think Mi Novia was in one that raid!
Dude,... she has FIRE POWER!!
jajaja!!

why can't the freakin Chung King Chinese just LEAVE THE FREAKN DOLLY LLAMA and Tibet ... ALONE!

goin_south says on Mar 26, 2008, 23:20:

you know,. Pasto is within range...?? si!

why can't the freakin Chung King Chinese just LEAVE THE FREAKN DOLLY LLAMA and Tibet ... ALONE!