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BOGOTA: Colombia’s Marxist FARC rebel group has freed 10 hostages
kidnapped last week, handing eight of them over to the International
Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC said Thursday.
“The civilians were released following a
request made by the FARC to the ICRC,” it said in a statement from
its Bogota office, adding that the handover took place Wednesday in
the rural northwest area of Vigia del Fuerte.
“The operation was the outcome of a strictly
confidential dialogue between the parties concerned and the ICRC’s
neutral and independent humanitarian action,” the humanitarian
organization added.
The other two hostages freed were handed over to
local authorities in Choco.
The 10 were among a group of 18 captured July 17
by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which two weeks
earlier was tricked by Colombian soldiers into handing over 15
high-profile hostages including French-Colombian politician Ingrid
Betancourt.
The group of 18 had been travelling by boat
through remote jungle rivers about 600 kilometers from Bogota.
Eight of the kidnap victims—five women, two
men and a child—were found by the army on the bank of the Atrato
River July 18, a day after the abduction, leaving the 10 others who
were freed Wednesday.
The ICRC said it would “continue to support
efforts to find means of obtaining the release of other hostages and
detainees in the hands of armed groups.”
FARC, Latin America’s longest-running
insurgency, continues to hold an estimated 700 hostages.
It faces renewed pressure to release its
remaining hostages after four million people took to the streets in
Colombia and around the world to highlight the plight of its
captives.
-- AFP
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