A massive search operation was under way today for a Colombian army general whose surprise capture by leftist rebels prompted President Juan Manuel Santos to suspend two-year-old peace talks.
Gen Ruben Dario Alzate, dressed in civilian clothes and without the heavy security befitting his high rank, was snatched yesterday by gunmen along with two others while visiting a hamlet along a remote river in western Colombia.
A soldier who managed to flee in the group's boat, and reportedly had advised the general against traveling deep into the jungle, said the rebels belonged to the recalcitrant 34th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
It's the first time in a half-century of fighting that the guerrillas have taken an army general captive. It couldn't have come at a worse moment for Santos.
Even before the general's capture, frustration with the slow progress of peace talks in Cuba and the guerrillas' refusal to wind down attacks had been building.
Earlier this month, the FARC captured two soldiers during intense fighting in northeast Colombia -- it has since offered to free them -- and killed two Indians who confronted rebels hanging up revolutionary banners on their reservation.
Calling Alzate's abduction "totally unacceptable," Santos ordered government peace negotiators not to travel today to Cuba for the next round of peace talks until Alzate and the two others -- an army captain and a female lawyer advising the army on a rural energy project -- are freed.
"The FARC is responsible for the life and safety of these three people," Santos told journalists after midnight after meeting with his top military commanders before they left for the western city of Quibdo to oversee rescue efforts.
The FARC considers captured military personnel to be prisoners of war even though it freed all soldiers in its control and swore off the capturing of civilians on the eve of talks in 2012.
It also has been clamoring for a cease-fire while peace talks continue, something Santos has rejected for fears it would allow the guerrillas to regroup after years of battlefield defeats at the hands of Colombia's US-backed military.
The FARC's 34th Front is among the group's most entrenched and dangerous fighting units, based in the dense, water-logged jungles around Quibdo where a slew of criminal gangs and drug-traffickers also operate.
