Bogota - Colombia's largest guerrilla force, the FARC, decapitated 11 peasants and dumped their bound bodies into a river in a violence-torn area of rural Colombia, police and a local priest said yesterday.
The killings took place over the weekend near the village of Tierralta in the northern cattle and agricultural region of Cordoba.
Most of the 40,000 people killed in the past decade of violence between left-wing rebels, outlawed right-wing militias and state security forces have been civilians. "The peasants were traveling by boat on the river when they were kidnapped by the guerrillas, who later decapitated them and dumped their bodies in the river," Father Joaquin Pachon, the priest of Tierralta, said. A police spokesman said the FARC were blamed for the attack. The rebels have not publicly commented on the massacre.