A local Conservative Party leader has been assassinated in the northwest of Colombia, local media reported Saturday.
According to the reports, Milton Enrique Guerra was shot in the head three times while attending a political meeting early Saturday morning.
An 11-year old girl who was accompanying the politician was injured in the attack and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Medellin newspaper El Colombiano reported that inhabitants of the Peque municipality where the assassination took place are feeling abandoned by the security forces.
“We have asked the Governor’s Office and the [Army’s] 4th Brigade to accompany us, because the people in the rural area feel abandoned. They say armed groups are patrolling and this is a 90% rural community,” the town’s Government Secretary told the newspaper.
The murder means that the amount of local politicians being killed in the months before the October 30 local elections has risen to 43.
