This is the war between the paramilitaries over drug trafficking routes in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Armed fighting between two paramilitary clans in Santa Marta over the dispute over the territory to stay with drug trafficking businesses in the city's port has already left 600 displaced persons (200 families) from the Siberian district, located in the municipality of Ciénaga.

At 6:00 in the morning of last Good Friday, the inhabitants of the village of La Sierra, located in the district of Siberia, were informed that the paramilitaries that the Conquistador Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada (ACSN) were heading towards that rural area where the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia remained settled ( Agc), commonly known as the 'Gulf Clan', so it was expected that a conflict would erupt between outlaw groups, as the peasant leader Ismael Arrieta - whose name was changed at his request - told the newspaper El Espectador.

It was until 8:00 in the morning of that Friday, April 15, that armed combat began. The members of the Gulf Clan (men alias' Otoniel ') and the ACSN, known as the' Pachencas' (heirs to the hernán Giraldo paramilitary clan), clashed with rifles and explosives until 4:00 in the afternoon of that day, as Arrieta told the Bogota newspaper, a conflict that would continue to this day.

You can also read: 70 tourists were evacuated due to clashes in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Information provided during an Extraordinary Security Council convened later by the Government of Magdalena indicated that nearly 150 men from the Pachencas and 50 from the Gulf Clan would have faced, leaving three people dead and, to date, 600 displaced, as reported by El Heraldo.

According to preliminary data provided by the authorities, collected by the same medium, two of the victims were identified as Franklin Caballero Blanco and Víctor Mojica, some labourers from the village of La Sierra, while the identity of the third victim has not been established.

According to the community's accounts to the newspaper El Espectador, the young people, whose age ranged at 25, were on their way to look for animals that they were herding, when they ran into members of the Pachencas, who murdered them in cold blood in the lower part of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

The inhabitants of the rural area also indicated to the CTI team of the Prosecutor's Office the presence of a third corps on the sidewalk. “In coordination with the Army, he moved to the site for the respective inspection of the body, which remains unidentified,” the authorities reported to the newspaper El Heraldo.

You can also read: Alias Otoniel testifies before the JEP and splashes members of the Colombian Military Forces

The mayor of Ciénaga, Luis Tete Samper, for his part, reported that the armed confrontation between the Gulf Clan and Los Pachencas “would be a “war” for the control of some of the districts and villages belonging to the municipality of Ciénaga, Magdalena, in order to market and secure the corridor and make their shipments of drug”.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Ombudsman called for the convening of a Territorial Committee for Extraordinary Transitional Justice in Ciénaga (Magdalena) to assess the security situation in the municipality, in order to analyze the possibility of sending a humanitarian mission to the affected community.

KEEP READING