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FARC leave 30,000 without electricity

By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director

Monday, April 19, 2010

The town of Barbacoas in Nariño state lost its electricity supply on Sunday, after FARC guerrillas attacked the local police station. 

The attack produced no casualties according to local authorities, but the mayor of Barbacoas said that homemade bombs and grenades used by the guerrillas destroyed the local electricity network. 

The army has attributed the attack to the FARC´s 29th front and is currently teaming up with the air force to attack that group´s positions in the region. 

Barbacoas is located in south western Colombia near the border with Ecuador, on a section of the Andes Mountains that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Amazon basin. 

The region has several strategic corridors which are used by drug traffickers, paramilitaries and guerrilla groups to take cocaine produced in the Amazon and in the mountains towards the Pacific coast. 

Human rights groups have said that armed groups, including the Colombian army, often threaten the lives of the rural population around Barbacoas. 

Last year more than twenty members of the AWA indigenous group were massacred by guerrillas who accused the natives of being informants for the Colombian army.