Colombian president orders renewed military offensive against FARC

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Wednesday again ordered the military to reinforce its offensive against the Southern and Eastern blocs of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group. The decision was based on intelligence reports that rebels in southern Colombia may be planning strikes, Santos said at an event at the Larandia military base in Caqueta department, where the 3rd joint southeast command was launched. "There will be no more spaces where they can take advantage of a lack of clear boundaries to carry out their operations," said Santos, who declared the rebels' top commanders to be high-value targets. Santos affirmed that starting Wednesday, some 50,000 military officers have made it their primary objective to capture or kill rebel commanders known by their aliases as "Carlos Antonio Lozada", "Romana", "Fabian Ramirez", "El Paisa" and "Joaquin Gomez." Recent intelligence reports claim the FARC aims to infiltrate social protest movements and carry out a series of attacks on military sites, including the Larandia military base and the Cazadores battalion in the southwest department of Caqueta, as well as the battalions in San Jose del Guaviare in the southern department of Guaviare and in La Macarena in the southern department of Meta. The rebels "are under orders to prepare strikes so that, as they say, Colombia and the world can say that the FARC is still alive," and launch terrorist attacks "because the FARC no longer has the capacity to fight our forces," said Santos. The Colombian government is now engaged in peace talks with the FARC in Havana, Cuba, to end their five-decade-old armed conflict.