Two alleged members of the FARC‘s dissident 36th Front were killed on Wednesday after they opened fire on buses that had taken journalists and engineers to a hydroelectric dam in northern Colombia, reported Blu Radio.
One of the radio station’s journalists, Carlos Andres Carmona, was in one the buses, together with some 50 other people, mainly reporters and personnel from Medellin‘s public utilities company EPM.
The caravan was attacked after the journalists, EPM workers and security forces returned from the controversial HidroItuango project in the north of the Antioquia province.
The security forces personnel that escorted the buses repelled the attack and reportedly killed two alleged FARC dissidents that had opened fire.
None of the civilians or security officials were reported as injured in the attack.
When the shooting began, the military police soldiers began to repel the attack and asked us to remain silent and sit on the floor of the bus. The fighting took place at only a few meters of the caravan that did not only consist of the buses with journalist, but also ambulances and a vehicle with EPM personnel.
Journalist Carlos Andres Carmona
According to the National Army, the counter-attack resulted in the deaths of the two alleged FARC dissidents, who also were in the possession of grenades.
The dissident 36th Front has resumed attacks on EPM and the controversial HidroItuango dam project that were abandoned by the FARC after a 2016 peace agreement with the government of former President Juan Manuel Santos.
Both locals and guerrillas have opposed the project that has been promoted by authorities and supported by death squads.
At least three local farmers who opposed the dam because of the presumed presence of mass graves were assassinated before EPM lost control of the project, the reservoir prematurely flooded and the presumed mass graves disappeared under water earlier this year.