Colombian forensic authorities have confirmed that three minors were among the ten people killed in an airstrike carried out early Thursday in the rural municipality of El Retorno, in the southern department of Guaviare. The operation marked the second aerial strike against illegal armed groups ordered by President Abelardo De La Espriella since he took office.
According to sources at Colombia’s National Institute of Legal Medicine (the country’s forensic agency), nine of the ten bodies recovered from the site have been identified so far this week. Four were women and five were men, including the three children. The tenth body was so severely damaged in the strike that identification has not yet been possible.
Investigators say a man known by the alias Urías Perdomo, described as a close associate of another armed group leader known as Calarcá, was initially believed to have died in the attack. However, his name does not appear among the nine confirmed victims, raising the possibility that he is the still-unidentified tenth casualty. Additional forensic testing is expected to clarify the matter.
The bodies were transported to Legal Medicine facilities in the cities of Florencia and Villavicencio for examination, and officials have not ruled out sending the unidentified remains to labs in Bogotá. The Defense Ministry is preparing an official statement on the operation, which also resulted in the seizure of weapons and military supplies.
Read the full original report at El Tiempo for further details.
Image: V. Kiselev / В. Киселев, BY-SA 3.0 (via Openverse).