Farc Kills Coca-picking peasants

By CESAR GARCIA - Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia - (AP) Suspected leftist rebels killed at
least 13 coca harvesters as part of a struggle with far-right paramilitary
gangs for control of Colombia's lucrative cocaine trade, police said
Wednesday.
The attack occurred sometime between Sunday and Monday in a remote
region near Vistahermosa, 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of the capital,
Bogota, said Gen. Alberto Ruiz, operations chief of the Colombian National
Police.
The peasant farmers were picking coca, the green bush used to make
cocaine, for a paramilitary militia when they came under attack from the
rival leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Ruiz told The
Associated Press.
He said the killings were linked to a territorial fight "over
control of the coca market and at least 13 coca-pickers are believed to have
been killed."
Also Wednesday, traffickers fired at a helicopter that was escorting
government's crop dusters fumigating coca fields near Vistahermosa, wounding
one of the crew members, the anti-narcotics police said.
Both of Colombia's warring factions fund themselves largely through
cocaine trafficking and have carried out massacres to terrify harvesters and
drug lab workers into selling their product exclusively to them. The illegal
groups then have it processed into purified cocaine and exported the drugs
abroad.
In June of last year, 34 coca harvesters were tied up and killed by
the rebels who say they fight for Socialist revolution in Colombia.

By Mr. Hollywood on Oct 5, 2005, 12:12 in Politics & the war.