11 dissidents killed in Colombian military operation

BOGOTA: Colombian troops killed 11 dissidents of the disbanded FARC guerilla group, officials said Monday, as a fight looms over the future of a 2016 peace agreement in run-off presidential elections.

The military operation took place Sunday in the south of the country as Colombians voted in the first round of presidential elections that left a hardline conservative and a former leftist guerilla vying for the presidency.

Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said the operation in Montanita in the southern department of Caqueta left "11 dead and two wounded, including a minor who had been recruited by force."

The 13 were part of an armed faction commanded by a former FARC rebel leader, Rodrigo Cadet, who rejected the 2016 peace agreement with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos.

The minister said the groups had been making threats against the mayor of the Caqueta capital of Florencia as well as an energy company in the region. "The criminals had been demanding extortion payments from businesses" in Florencia and its surrounding area, the army said in a statement.

Under the peace accord, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) disarmed its 7,000 fighters in order to join the political process. It is now a political party.

However, remnants of the rebel force -- estimated by the army to number about 1,200 -- are still active in the southern border areas, financing their operations through drug trafficking and extortion rackets.

"We will not drop our guard against residual groups. We will continue fighting them with the utmost forcefulness," Santos said on Twitter. Sunday´s military action was a jarring reminder that embers of Colombia´s 50-year-old conflict are still burning despite the peace accord with the FARC, once Latin America´s largest guerilla group. Besides contending with remnants of the FARC, Santos´s government has yet to conclude a peace accord with the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN.