Rebels from Colombia’s largest rebel group, FARC, killed two soldiers Thursday in the northwestern Antioquia department.
According to reports, the two soldiers were killed in combat with rebels in the Taraza municipality in the Paramillo Mountains, some 90 miles north of the city of Medellin. There were no reports of deaths among the rebels.
Fighting in the northern part of the Antioquia department and the south of Cordoba has intensified since the end of the FARC’s unilateral ceasefire on January 20.
BACKGROUND: FARC ends unilateral truce, proposes bilateral ceasefire
On January 31, some 300 Colombian Special Forces soldiers, supported by the Air Force, stormed a small FARC camp in the neighboring Tierralta municipality, killing the leader of the FARC’s 5th Front, “Jacobo Arango,” together with five other rebels.
Arango was considered one of the leading commanders of the FARC’s Northwestern Bloc, a mid-sized rebel unit active in large parts of the Antioquia, Choco and Cordoba departments.
The FARC’s Northwestern Bloc said the killing of Arango was an “assassination” and vowed to “continue the struggle with higher morale […] in memory of our assassinated commander.”
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