The southwest of Colombia continued to have the country’s highest homicide rate in 2010, according to a report released by the national coroner’s office.
The government body, which is in charge of providing forensic services to support the aims of justice, determined that out of around 7,000 autopsies conducted in the Valle, Cauca, and Nariño departments last year, over 4,100 were homicides.
In a public audience Monday, Medicina Legal Director Juan Angel Isaac Llanos said the amount of violence in the southwest is worrisome.
“We definitely cannot accustom ourselves. That shows us that there is still a lot to do to lower the statistics,” Llanos said, according to newspaper El Pais.
“That is a high estimate to which we cannot accustom ourselves, and less so if we keep in mind that 50 percent of the cases are homicides with firearms,” said Llanos.
The total number of deaths by homicide in Colombia as a whole is disturbingly high as well, at over 16,000 of the nearly 33,000 autopsies performed, making homicides the cause of just under 50 percent of deaths in Colombia.