Church shootout in Colombia leaves 3 dead and 14 injured

Bogota, Colombia – Recently, the cocaine–producing region of south Colombia witnessed a gruesome shootout in a church that left at least three people dead and 14 wounded, according to news report.

Though the police have put the death toll at three, a local doctor disclosed that four had been killed.

“We were singing hymns to God when I heard the shooting, a burst of gunfire,” said the church's pastor, Francisco Sevillano.

“They opened the doors and started shooting indiscriminately at the churchgoers,” said Col. Raul Buitrago, acting police commander for the rural Putumayo province near the border with Ecuador, where the attack occurred on September 6.

“For the moment, it looks like the victims were innocent churchgoers; humble people with no interest in the armed conflict,” the police official said, referring to Colombia's four–decade war between the government and left–wing and right–wing armed groups.

The bloodshed began when suspected Marxist gunmen entered the Christian Alliance church on 6 September and shot dead a man in the pews, said Major Eduardo Beltran, police commander in Puerto Asis, where the attack occurred.

But the apparent target of the hit men was in another row with his family. When the shooting began he took out a gun and starting returning fire, Beltran said.
“It turned into a firefight,” Beltran said.

Police earlier said the armed assailants were suspected members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, as Colombia's main rebel group is known.

But Beltran admitted that further investigations indicate right–wing militia groups or common criminals may have also been behind the attack in Puerto Asis, located 530km south–west of Bogota, the capital.

While pamphlets with FARC propaganda were found amid the bloodshed, Beltran said the attackers may have dropped them there to confuse the investigation.

Among the dead were two men and one woman, Beltran said. One of the injured was a child, he added.
Pilar Castro, a doctor at the local hospital, told local radio that the death toll numbered four, and included children. Castro appealed for blood donations for the wounded.

“We need blood because in this little hospital there are no reserves,” Castro said.

Killings are common in Puerto Asis and are often related to the drug trade or the struggle between leftist guerrillas and the illegal paramilitaries. Both sides draw funds from cocaine.

The United States has been carrying out a massive operation in Putumayo, where Puerto Asis is located, and other parts of Colombia, the world's main producer of cocaine, to wipe out the drug crops.