Nine people, including four police officers, were killed in Colombia in three separate armed attacks.

Three officers who were not on duty were murdered in an "indiscriminate" attack in the northeastern town of Pailitias, according to a police statement on Sunday.

A pregnant woman was also injured.

The attackers have not been identified but police suspect ELN, the last active guerrilla in the country, known to operate in the region.

FARC dissidents involved?

In the south of the country, five men were also found dead in San Vicente del Caguan, declared the mayor Julian Perdomo, deploring that "frequently, peasants are found murdered".

These attacks are blamed by the authorities on dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) who rejected a 2016 peace agreement that led to the disarmament of the guerrillas.

A fourth policeman died in "an incursion of an armed group" in a district of Cali (southwest), according to the mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina.

According to the military intelligence services, FARC dissidents and ELN guerrillas are active around this city, the third largest in the country, as well as paramilitary groups.

President's helicopter targeted

Colombia is currently facing the worst wave of violence it has seen since the disarmament of the FARC.

The government of President Ivan Duque - whose helicopter was targeted by gunfire near the Venezuelan border on Friday - accuses the various armed groups vying for control of drug trafficking and illegal mining.

The independent Observatory Indepaz estimates at 45 the number of massacres - simultaneous assassination of at least three people according to the UN definition - committed in Colombia since the beginning of the year.

In total, the nearly six decades of conflict have claimed more than nine million victims in this country (dead, missing and displaced).

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