The bodies of at least 211 victims of right-wing paramilitaries were found on Saturday in mass graves in southern Colombia.
”We are again shocked at how gruesome this war is,” said Interior Minister Carlos Holguin on Saturday.
The discovery of more bodies could be expected as excavation work on the graves in Putumayo province on the Ecuadorian and Peruvian borders had not been completed, he added.
The tip-off about the mass graves had come from former paramilitaries, who can expect milder sentences under a controversial law on justice and peace, if they confess to their crimes.
Their confessions had brought several politicians and officials behind bars.
The victims found in the mass graves were mainly farmers and all those whom the paramilitaries ”in their insatiable hunger for land to produce drugs had killed”, said Holguin.
Since 1999, the paramilitaries have waged war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) for control of the region.
The paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) were founded in the 1980s by large landowners to protect them from left-wing rebels. In 2004, AUC commanders began peace negotiations with the government of President Alvaro Uribe.
Meanwhile, more than 30 000 paramilitaries across the country have been disarmed. Almost immediately afterwards, many of them begin working for drug cartels or large landowners, experts say.
Massacres of civilians still occur. – Sapa-DPA