Colombian authorities raised the number of victims who lost their lives in a FARC attack on a candidate for the governorship of the Guaviare department to five.
Following preliminary reports which said that only the driver of Conservative Party politician Jose Perez Restrepo was killed in an attempted kidnapping on Sunday, authorities said that four police guards were also killed.
Perez and four others were injured in the attack, which appears to be an attempt to kidnap the conservative politician.
Police say that members of the FARC ambushed the campaign motorcade and opened fire.
According to media reports, the politician was taken captive by the rebels, but was freed when by policemen and soldiers came to the rescue. He was taken to the emergency unit of a hospital in the department’s capital San Jose del Guaviare.
The politician was campaigning for the departmental elections later this month, who are being held earlier than planned as the governor-elect, Conservative Party member Oscar de Jesus Lopez Cadavid, is in jail awaiting trial for alleged ties to paramilitary drug lord “Cuchillo.”