Colombia launches ‘elite force’ to hunt rebels, drug gangs

BOGOTA: Colombia on Friday launched a 7,000-strong elite force to fight rebels financed by drug trafficking and other illegal activities, and which allegedly operate across borders.

Surrounded by helicopters, tanks and hundreds of soldiers at the Tolemaida military base in central Colombia, President Ivan Duque described the launch as “historic”.

The force, he said, will be tasked with “subduing, beating and subjecting the structures of drug trafficking and the... threats linked to the illegal exploitation of minerals, trafficking of species, of persons and, of course, to any transnational form of terrorism.”

The force will “without qualms” pursue members of the ELN – the last active guerrilla group in Colombia, as well as drug gangs and ex-FARC rebels who have abandoned the terms of a 2016 peace deal, he said.