Colombia: UN rights office again condemns leftist rebels for killing civilians

For the third time in a week, United Nations human rights officials have condemned the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Popular Army (FARC-EP) for attacks on civilians.

The Colombia office of the UH High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) reported that three civilians, including a 76-year-old woman and an eight-year-old child, were killed and seven others wounded in an explosion yesterday attributed to the rebel group in southern Caquetá department.

“The Office demands that FARC-EP members apply without reserve the humanitarian principle of protection of the civilian population, which requires that those who undertake attacks take precautions to avoid the death or injury of civilians,” it said in its latest condemnation of human rights abuses in Colombia's decades-old civil war.

Last week the Office accused the group of committing war crimes in the separate massacres of nine bus passengers and nine members of a local municipal council.