FARC guerrillas attack Colombian forces, seven killed

Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) killed seven soldiers and state personnel on 23 May in two attacks in the northern departments of Antioquia and La Guajira, the country's media reported. In the district of San Andrés de Cuerquia in Antioquia, suspected sharpshooters from the FARC's Front 36 shot dead three soldiers, provoking a gun fight in which an unspecified number of guerrillas may have been injured, Caracol radio reported. Three soldiers were also wounded. The newspaper El Colombiano reported that two FARC guerrillas died in this attack and two were injured and arrested. An ambush attributed to Front 59 of the FARC in La Guajira killed two policemen and two immigration officials, Caracol reported. The assailants were said to have thrown grenades or explosives at two cars travelling between the districts of Maicao and Paraguachón near Venezuela's frontier, killing the head of the Migration office in Paraguachón, another Migration officer and two policemen travelling behind them. A female deputy-head of Migration in that district was injured, Caracol reported. Authorities also raised to 11 the number of soldiers killed on 22 May in an attack by Colombia's other guerrilla force the National Liberation Army (ELN), Caracol reported on 23 May. Separately, police and state investigators caught at an unspecified location a suspected member of the FARC's Tenth Front, the presumed guerrilla dubbed Sombrerón, Bogotá's Radio Santa Fe reported on 23 May. The detainee was suspected of involvement in gunfire attacks on police in the north-eastern district of Arauquita and on Navy ships, and in killings of policemen in unspecified incidents.