In Colombia, clashes between armed groups leave 100 dead and 11,000 displaced in the Catatumbo region

Once again, they flee. By canoe, motorcycle, car, truck, on foot, the inhabitants of the Colombian region of Catatumbo try to escape threats and bullets. In this north-eastern part of Colombia, on the border with Venezuela, the guerrillas of the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Army, ELN) have launched a deadly offensive since Thursday January 16 to eliminate their local rival, a splinter group of the former Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) guerrilla group.

According to the authorities, more than 100 people were killed in five days, mainly civilians. And more than 11,000 others chose to leave, in panic and without luggage, to find refuge in the neighboring towns of Tibu, Ocaña and Cucuta, or even in Venezuela.

“We are facing one of the largest and most serious humanitarian crises the Catatumbo has ever known, if not the largest”, declared, Monday January 20, Iris Marin Ortiz, head of Defensoria del Pueblo (the institution responsible for ensuring respect for human rights), specifying that the number of people who fled could be “much higher”. Monday morning, displaced people continued to arrive at the precarious reception points set up on both sides of the border.

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