Colombia president oversees rebel hunt

TACUEYO, Colombia — President Ivan Duque traveled Wednesday to a conflict-ridden zone in Colombia’s southwest to oversee a military offensive aimed at hunting down a band of suspected renegade rebels blamed for the killing of five indigenous leaders.

The five people from the Tacueyo reservation were killed late Tuesday when their caravan of armored SUVs was ambushed by gunmen the government says belong to a faction of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that refused to accept the larger rebel group’s peace treaty with the government.

Among those killed was Cristina Bautista, the top authority and spiritual leader of the semiautonomous reservation in southwestern Colombia. Six other people were injured as the gunmen continued to fire at an ambulance tending to the injured.

Duque immediately condemned the “assassination” and ordered his military to step up operations in the area to hunt down the assailants.

Indigenous leaders have repeatedly condemned the government for standing by as a “genocide” takes place in communities caught in the crossfire of Colombia’s decades-long conflict between leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and state security forces.

Dozens of indigenous and social leaders have been killed in the aftermath of Colombia’s historic 2016 peace accord as illegal armed groups and dissidents seek to exert control over former rebel territory and lucrative drug routes.