By IANS
Bogota : At least 12 guerrillas and three security personnel have been killed in clashes in Colombia, Spanish news agency EFE reported Tuesday.
Of the security personnel, two police officers were killed and two others wounded in a rebel guerrilla attack early Monday in the southern province of Caqueta. One soldier was killed Sunday in Puerto Rico.
According to Colombian authorities, seven members of the country’s largest insurgency group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have been killed in an operation Sunday night in the southwestern province of Cauca.
The security forces also uncovered a workshop for making arms and explosives during that operation.
In similar operations, the Colombian Army killed five militants in the provinces of La Guajira, Cauca and Boyaca.
According to the police, the incident took place in the wee hours of Sunday in the town of Puerto Rico, 500 km southwest of Bogota, where FARC rebels assaulted a police patrol.
One soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush by the FARC in the same town Sunday.
In Caqueta between 1998 and 2002 a Switzerland-sized neutral zone was established that hosted ultimately fruitless peace talks between the government and the FARC.
The FARC, which has around 12,000-18,000 members, is the largest and best-equipped rebel group of Colombia. It is also considered as one of the world’s richest and most powerful guerrilla groups. It operates in almost half of the country and is financing itself mainly through extortion, drug trafficking and ransom.
The rebel group has kept hostage more than 45 high-profile people, including presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, since at least 2002.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had engaged the rebels in talks for a prisoner swap, but Colombian President Alvaro Uribe withdrew Chavez’s authorization for the negotiations after the latter spoke to the head of the Colombian military, General Mario Montoyas, which broke an agreement on the negotiations.