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| - A community leader and three family members were killed amid continued bloodletting in Colombia despite a nationwide lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Thursday. Alvaro Narvaez Daza, his wife, son and 15-year-old granddaughter were shot dead overnight Wednesday in Mercaderes, in the southern department of Cauca, governor Elias Larrahondo said. "The department of Cauca, in addition to the pandemic, is facing a kind of escalation of the armed conflict," Larrahondo told Colombia's RCN Noticias. Daza's 17-year-old son was wounded in the attack but was out of danger, Mercaderes mayor Fernando Diaz told local media. Daza was head of the community action board in nearby El Vado village and had not reported any threats to his life, officials said. According to the governor, at least six people have been killed since Sunday in Cauca, an area historically roiled by the conflict given its strategic location along a drug trafficking route to the United States and Central America. The area is at the center of a turf war between dissident members of the FARC rebel group who have rejected a peace deal, ELN guerrillas and drug trafficking gangs, say the authorities, who have also reported the presence of members of Mexican drug cartels. The United Nations last week expressed growing concern for the safety of Cauca residents, saying the situation was "deeply worrying." Rupert Colville, the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that the virus lockdown measures "have aggravated an already violent and volatile situation" in the department. "Armed groups as well as criminal gangs appear to be taking advantage of the fact that people are in lockdown to expand their presence and control over the territory," Colville said in Geneva. Colombia has reported some 6,000 coronavirus infections, with nearly 300 deaths. At least 108 social activists and community leaders were gunned down in Colombia in 2019, according to UN figures. Most of the deaths occurred in areas where armed groups and drug trafficking gangs operate. Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, supplying an illicit trade in the United States, the globe's biggest consumer. raa/rsr/db/ft
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