Category World News

The Colombian army says more than 50 soldiers have been seized by civilians in a southwest mountainous area.

A platoon of soldiers was the first to be seized on Saturday during an operation in El Tambo, a municipality that is part of an area known as the Micay Canyon, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.

On Sunday, another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed towards the town of El Plateado, in the same region.

“As a result of both events]both kidnappings], a total of four noncommissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty”, the army said on Sunday.

General Federico Alberto Mejia, who leads military operations in the southwest, added in a video that it was a “kidnapping” by rebels who had “infiltrated” the community.

The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissident group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that refused to be part of a peace deal with the government in 2016.

President Gustavo Petro, who has pledged to bring peace to the country, said on social media that freeing the soldiers “is imperative”.

The left-wing leader has been trying for months to ensure that the country’s armed forces gain access to Micay Canyon.

But his government has struggled to contain violence in urban and rural areas as several rebel groups try to take over territory abandoned by the FARC after the peace deal.

This has made many Colombians fearful of a return to the bloody violence of the 1980s and 90s, when cartel attacks and political assassinations were frequent.

According to officials, the strikes on Monday morning targeted residential areas in numerous Kyiv-arean districts. The city’s assault, which is the second major overnight bombing in a week, suggests that Russia is eager to put pressure on Iran given that the United States’ decision to join Israel’s growing airstrikes is a top priority.

“A new, massive attack on the capital. The military administration of Kyiv’s head, Tymur Tkachenko, said in a statement that “there might be several waves of enemy drones.”

Tkachenko stated on Telegram, “The Russians’ style is unchanged; to hit wherever there may be people.” This is the Russian way of saying “Residential buildings, exits from shelters.”

Emergency services claimed that during the extensive attack, residential structures, hospitals, sports facilities, and the entrance to a metro station that serves as a bomb shelter were all damaged.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko posted a message on Telegram claiming that the attack had harmed at least 10 people and damaged six of Kyiv’s ten districts.

According to Lymenko, “at least four people were killed in Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, where the entire entrance to a residential high-rise building was destroyed.”

He continued, “There are still people under the rubble.”

Meanwhile, according to authorities, a Russian short-range drone attack in the Chernihiv region on Sunday morning killed two people and injured ten others, including three children.

In the city of Bila Tserkva, which is located 85 kilometers (53 miles) southwest of Kyiv, another person was killed and eight were hurt overnight.

Sabotage

Russia hasn’t made any comments on the strikes. Although the Russian-led war that both sides claimed was aimed at civilians in February 2022, thousands of civilians were killed, overwhelmingly Ukrainians, in the conflict.

The most recent drone attack in Kyiv by Russia was the deadliest, killing 28 people and injuring more than 150, according to Ukrainian officials, who claim nearly 30 sites were targeted by repeated attacks.

In light of the rise in attacks on the capital, Oleksandr Syrskii, the country’s commander-in-chief, has pledged to bolster its strikes against Russia.

We won’t just defend ourselves. Because of this, he said, “We still retreat, lose people and territories,” the AFP news agency reported.

In order to achieve this, Ukraine “will expand and deepen” its attacks on Russian military targets, he continued.

According to the Ukrainian air force, Russian forces stormed Ukraine with at least 47 drones and fired three missiles overnight.