Colombia

NORTE DE SANTANDER, Colombia, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Camouflaged Colombian troops with guns and anti-COVID masks creep through dense vegetation in suffocating heat, ready for their many enemies crisscrossing the Venezuelan border.

The soldiers are part of a 14,000-strong military unit created last month to stem rising bloodshed in the northeastern province of Norte de Santander: Colombia's new epicenter of conflict, fueled by rising cocaine production.

BOGOTA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Colombian authorities are focused on breaking up the Clan del Golfo gang - whose network extends to 28 countries around the world - after the capture of the group's leader late last month, the country's top cop said on Wednesday.

Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias "Otoniel," was the country's most-wanted drug lord until he was detained in the northern jungle region of Uraba, in what President Ivan Duque said was the hardest recent blow to drug trafficking.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian security forces have captured the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, a rural warlord who stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right.

President Iván Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar.

Colombia’s military presented Úsuga to the media in handcuffs and wearing rubber boots preferred by rural farmers.

ACANDI, Colombia (AP) — It was 5 a.m. and in dozens of small tents around 500 migrants began showing signs of life, rising, packing their bags and preparing to cross the Darien Gap, the thick jungle teeming with snakes, bandits and treacherous rivers that separates Colombia from Panama.

Over a fire, Emile and Claude cooked some yucca and pasta to take on the six-day journey, along with 20 liters of drinking water for which they paid the steep price of $20. The men declined to provide their last names because they had entered Colombia illegally and feared being fined.

BOGOTA, Aug 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Colombia’s attorney general’s office will charge former army commander General Mario Montoya for responsibility of 104 extrajudicial executions, as part of the “false positives” scandal.

The false positives took place between 2002 and 2008, during the term of ex-President Alvaro Uribe, when soldiers murdered civilians and registered them as guerrilla fighters killed in combat to receive benefits.

BOGOTA, July 25 (NNN-TELESUR) — On Saturday, the Institute for Peace (INDEPAZ) confirmed the assassination of Jose Vianey, who became the social leader 101 murdered by irregular armed groups operating with impunity in Colombia.

Vianey was found dead in the “La Montañita” community in Caqueta, after being shot by unidentified gunmen. 

He was the local community Action Board’s Attorney, where he supported rural workers’ demands. 

Local authorities launched an investigation to determine the instigators and the motives behind the murder.

BOGOTA, July 22 (Reuters) - Colombia arrested 10 people accused of involvement in attacks on a helicopter carrying President Ivan Duque and a military base last month that officials said on Thursday were planned by former FARC rebel leaders based in Venezuela.

The car bombing at the base in the northeastern city of Cucuta, home to the army's 30th brigade, wounded 44 people, including two U.S. military advisers. Later in June, a helicopter approaching city with Duque and other officials aboard was strafed by bullets. 

BOGOTA, July 16 (Reuters) - Former Haitian justice ministry official Joseph Felix Badio may have ordered the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise, a Colombian police chief said on Friday, citing a preliminary investigation into the murder.

Moise was shot dead when assassins armed with assault rifles stormed his private residence in the hills above Port-au-Prince on July 7.

BOGOTA, June 25 (Reuters) - A helicopter carrying Colombia's President Ivan Duque and others was struck by multiple bullets in an attack on Friday, he said in a video message.

The incident took place while the president's helicopter was flying through Colombia's Catatumbo region toward the city of Cucuta, capital of the country's Norte de Santander province, Duque said.

"What's clear is that this is a cowardly attack where bullet holes can be seen in the presidential aircraft," Duque said.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia reached 100,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 this week, becoming just the tenth country in the world to hit the grim milestone.

The South American nation of 50 million has been registering a growing number of daily cases since April and over the past seven days it had the world’s third-highest per capita death rate from COVID-19, according to data published by Oxford University.