Rebel group FARC is offering a $450 reward for every killed policeman, a police commander from the south of Colombia said Saturday.
According to colonel Carlos Vargas, chief of police in the southern Caqueta department, the guerrillas’ 15th front has ordered that two policeman must die in each of the six municipalities of the department.
“This type of perverse tactics against the police is already a tendency in drug trafficking,” Vargas told newspaper El Tiempo.
The police official’s statement followed an attack on a police convoy on Monday in which two members of the security forces died. Earlier that day, a FARC attack on the town of Montañita killed four, including one pregnant woman.
“Last week’s attacks show that the guerrillas do not care about harming the civilian population,” said the police commander.
The Caqueta department is one of the FARC’s strongholds in the south of Colombia. The department is where guerrillas allegedly kidnapped four Chinese oil workers a year ago and where French journalist Romeo Langlois was held hostage and released after being captured in combat.
