Four Colombian soldiers killed fighting rebels

Four soldiers were reported killed and two wounded in a gun fight with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the south-eastern department of Nariño late on 30 January, while the FARC and state representatives were to resume peace talks in Havana on 31 January. The soldiers were killed when rebels fired on a patrol in the Puerto Sánchez locality of the district of Policarpa, amid ongoing army operations in southern Colombia, El Espectador and the broadcaster Caracol reported. The same day the FARC were thought to have kidnapped three oil-sector contractors in the district of Piamonte in the southern Cauca department, although this had yet to be verified. This followed the FARC's kidnapping of two policemen on 25 January and their recent declaration that they would resume hostage-taking. The engineers were stopped on a road by armed elements outside the district capital, Caracol reported. The National Association of the Kidnapped and Disappeared (Asociación Nacional de Secuestrados y Desaparecidos), a civic body, has stated its conviction that the FARC retained as captives "at least" 20 soldiers and policemen in spite of declaring in February 2012 that it had freed all servicemen. The broadcaster RCN La Radio cited its spokesman Rafael Mora as saying "we are certain that about 20 members of the military remain in the FARC's hands...we have documented data with the complaints and all the information needed in this case to show that the FARC still hold them." That is if they had not been murdered or had not died: RCN cited the mother of the sergent William Gómez Cabrera, reported as kidnapped in 2004 in the southern district of Teteyé, as saying that she had been "told" he was a killed a year later but had no reliable news. "I need to be told the truth. If they murdered him, they should tell me where they left him, where his remains are," she was cited as saying.