FARC guerrillas attacked a camp belonging to a contractor employed by
oil company Ecopetrol in the remote El Catatumbo region, near the
border with Venezuela, but no one was injured, officials said Tuesday.
The rebels torched six vehicles, including an ambulance, at the camp,
Norte de Santander province police commander Col. Richard Portilla said.
The FARC guerrillas also burned the camp, where Ecopetrol operates an oil well.
Initial reports said the oil workers had been kidnapped, but Portilla said “there is no one missing and no one was injured.”
The
rebel attack occurred Sunday night at the camp near the remote hamlet
of Petrolea, Portilla said, noting that word of the incident got out
slowly because the rebels left behind a bomb on the access road to the
camp.
“Police provided support for 30th Brigade soldiers with
two officers from the bomb squad to find and deactivate the devices,
(which were) planted strategically with the goal of doing harm to the
troops,” Portilla said.
The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and largest
leftist guerrilla group, was founded in 1964, has an estimated 8,000 to
17,000 fighters and operates across a large swath of this Andean nation. (Latin American Herald Tribune)