Violence is at its height in Colombia. Armed groups financed by drug trafficking killed 33 people in eleven days in several parts of the country. This is one of the heaviest results since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement. The weekend was particularly bloody.
Eleven dead on Friday alone
Seventeen murders were carried out on Friday and Saturday. Eleven people were initially killed in attacks in areas bordering Venezuela and Ecuador. And on Saturday a "new massacre" was committed which left "at least six dead" and two "missing", said Jhon Rojas, governor of Nariño (southwest), one of the regions affected by the violence. These killings followed more or less the same scenario: an armed group broke in, and opened fire in an isolated place or took the victims, mostly young people, to then abandon their bodies.
According to the governor, Colombian President Ivan Duque is due to attend a meeting with authorities in the southwest of the country to examine the upsurge in violence financed by drug trafficking. The United Nations had so far identified 33 massacres in 2020 in Colombia, in territories plagued by armed groups, where the underground economy, poverty and "a limited state presence" dominate. The UN classifies as "massacre" any assassination of at least three people perpetrated at the same time by the same perpetrator or group of perpetrators.
Groups of delinquents are believed to be responsible for 78% of these murders. The vast majority (80%) is also located in departments where there are "enclaves of illegal coca production", according to the UN.
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