In Olaya Herrera, Nariño, a man lost his life amid fighting between armed groups

The mayor of the municipality of Olaya Herrera (Nariño), Cruz Dalmiro Olmedo Torres, informed Blu Radio that on the night of last Monday, April 11, in a neighborhood of the urban area, a man lost his life in the middle of an armed dispute between two illegal groups.

According to the local president, the events took place in El Natal around 8:30 in the evening, after a discussion between members of two armed groups outside the law inside a commercial complex, where dozens of people were leaving.

In the shooting, which lasted approximately 15 to 20 minutes, the civilian died instantly, whose identity is still unknown. As the mayor told Blu Radio, it was minutes of terror and uncertainty that the inhabitants of El Natal experienced, as they ran in the midst of bullets to get safe.

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The head of the municipal administration added to the station that the armed confrontation would recur on Tuesday, April 12, but on that occasion, in the rural area of Olaya Herrera, where inhabitants of five villages were forced to travel to the coliseum in the municipality in order to protect their lives.

Although the first inquiries suggest that the FARC dissidents would be one of the armed groups that would be behind these criminal acts, for the time being the authorities of that municipality of Nariño do not know with certainty which group it would be.

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It should be remembered that this is not the first conflict with fatalities reported in the municipality of Olaya Herrera (Nariño). On January 31, RCN Radio learned that in the Tangarial village, armed fighting took place between two groups of the FARC dissidents, in which two people were killed and another one disappeared.

According to the testimonies collected by the station, the confrontation arose between the 'Franco Benavides' Mobile Column of the FARC dissidents and the Western Bloc 'Alfonso Cano', apparently over the control of drug trafficking routes in the territory.

The fighting between the members of these illegal armed groups also caused the community to be forced to move to the urban areas of the municipalities of Olaya Herrera and El Charco.

The Secretary of Government of Nariño, Amilkar Pantoja, assured RCN Radio that, after the armed confrontation, the inhabitants of the Tangarial village, and in general the entire municipality of Olaya Herrera, requested “the presence of a national government commission to address the situation in the region”.

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