A group of 380 people, including 187 children, have been forcibly displaced from a town on Colombia’s Pacific coast, local media reported Thursday.
The community, which was living in the Timbiqui municipality in the Cauca department, say they were told by paramilitaries they would be killed if the army, which had a presence in the area, ever left.
Following a surprise departure of the town’s military naval battalion last weekend, the community had to flee, it said.
The group includes 128 children aged between 0 and 4 years, 59 children aged between 4 and 18 years, 179 adults and 12 elderly people.
One child and one woman are paralyzed from the waist down and one of the adults is blind.
A local parish is providing them with food. They say no support has been sent by Colombian authorities, despite ongoing communications with the presidential Human Rights Office.
