By AFP and Entorno | 2025-01-21

TIBU, Colombia -- Gladis Angarita, 62, fled her village in northeast Colombia in terror on January 17, among thousands escaping a fresh guerrilla onslaught that has claimed dozens of lives in just a few days.

She had no time to pack, escaping with little more than the clothes on her back and her asthma medication.

"There was a lot of shooting," Angarita told AFP in the town of Tibu, on the border with Venezuela, where she found refuge at a community center with about 500 others -- including many children and elderly people.

"Out of fear, we left everything" behind, she lamented, sitting on a log and sucking on her inhaler. "I don't even have any pajamas."

Herne Vargas was also forced to leave his home and land in a small hamlet in the rural area of Tibu.

"It was that or risk being killed," the farmer shared in a testimony published by the local newspaper La Opinión on January 19.

He vividly recalls the ultimatum delivered by illegal armed groups ordering him to leave, as well as the harrowing sight of the dead in the aftermath of the initial confrontations.

Vargas fled to Cúcuta, the provincial capital, with his wife and 12-year-old son, clinging to the hope that the violence would soon subside so they could return.

"What are we going to do here?" he asked, reflecting on the uncertainty of their displacement.

Slain family

According to a military intelligence report, the clashes reportedly began after the National Liberation Army (ELN) murdered the manager of a funeral home in the town of San Miguel, along with his wife and their 6-month-old baby.

The report, released by Blu Radio on January 17, indicates that Miguel López and his family were killed for defying an ELN order not to retrieve or bury the bodies of FARC dissidents killed by the ELN in prior days.

López, operating in an area heavily influenced by illegal armed groups, had been collecting corpses from dangerous locations at the request of grieving families or local authorities.

The murder of the López Durán family appears to have been the catalyst for the intense clashes between the ELN and FARC dissidents, which resulted in dozens of deaths.

Colombia's ELN -- the largest guerrilla group still active in the conflict-riddled South American country -- launched a bloody attack on January 16 in the northeastern Catatumbo region.

It targeted civilians and dissident fighters of a rival formation comprised of ex-members of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla force who kept fighting after it disarmed in 2017.

Authorities reported at least 80 people killed by January 19, some two dozen injured and 5,000 displaced in an upheaval reminiscent of the bloody 1990s, when Colombia endured the worst period in its six-decade-old armed conflict.

Nine people also were killed in clashes in recent days between the ELN and the Gulf Clan, Colombia's biggest drug cartel, in another northern region of the country. Such violence led President Gustavo Petro on January 17 to suspend negotiations with the ELN, which had been part of his stated quest for "total peace."

Even more deadly violence was reported on January 20. A ministry official told AFP that another 20 people had been killed in fighting between rival FARC splinter groups in the southern Guaviare department.

'We want peace'

"We want peace!" Angarita said shortly after arriving in Tibu, a town in the Colombian region with the world's biggest drug plantations, according to the United Nations.

"The war has to end," she sighed.

A 2016 peace pact with FARC had sought to end the longest-running war in the Americas.

However, guerrilla groups with destabilizing agendas, extremist paramilitary factions and drug cartels remain in open conflict in various regions of the country as battles persist over control of illegal mining, drug resources and trafficking routes.

The ELN, which has about 5,800 fighters and a major stake in the drug business, has taken part in failed negotiations with Colombia's last five governments.

Since 1964, the conflict is estimated to have resulted in some 9 million Colombians either killed, disappeared or forced to leave their homes, according to authorities.

Last November, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a humanitarian organization, said at least 1.5 million people had been displaced since the 2016 deal with the FARC.

Worse than Venezuela

On January 18, Tibu was a hive of frantic activity, its bus terminal bursting with people desperate to flee to other parts of Colombia or further afield.

"My heart aches for Catatumbo... for the whole country. Many innocent people are paying the price for war," sobbed Carmelina Perez, 62, as she used a piece of cardboard to shield herself from the harsh sun.

Perez said she fled with her husband and the grandchildren to Tibu "in panic." She worries desperately about her daughters who stayed behind in their village.

Around Perez at the shelter, hammocks hung from trees for people to sleep in and children ran around while women prepared a collective soup in a large pot over a fire.

Fellow refugee Luis Alberto Urrutia, a 39-year-old Venezuelan, said he had fled the economic and political crisis in his own country seven years ago to work in the coca plantations of Catatumbo.

Now, he is on the move again and contemplating a return home.

"This is more difficult than even in Venezuela," Urrutia told AFP in Tibu.

"There is danger everywhere, but more even here. There are many dead," he said of the last few days' events.