By IANS
Bogota : The military backed by gunships have killed 20 guerrillas of Colombia’s largest insurgency group over the past week in a mountainous region southwest of the capital, EFE news agency reported Friday.
Twenty guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were killed as a result of the ongoing army offensives launched last week after several soldiers died in a minefield laid by the group, Marta Lucia Padilla, an official in the western Tolima province said.
Thirty guerrillas were also wounded in the fighting, Padilla told reporters, adding that several important members of the group were also among the dead.
The FARC, which fought a succession of Colombian governments since the mid-1960s, now has roughly 8,000 combatants, according to an estimate reported by the BBC.