With a deep sense of mourning and respect, the National Army paid tribute on the morning of this May 7 to the four soldiers who fell in combat last Friday, May 3, in the rural area of the municipality of Argelia, Cauca.
The men who served the Colombians were identified as Jorge Fuentes, Camilo Molina, Javier Sosa and Jairo Urrego, professional soldiers who were fired with the highest honors. According to the Public Force, after the tribute, the bodies of the soldiers will return to their places of origin.
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Accompanied by military and civil authorities, as well as by their comrades in arms, the bodies of the soldiers will receive the last farewell from their families and loved ones in their municipalities of origin. This farewell act not only honors the memory of the fallen, but also seeks to reaffirm the commitment to the members of the country’s Military Forces.
“We fraternally accompany each of their families, committing to honor their memory for the sake of the security and tranquility of the southwest of the country,” reads the publication of the National Army, which shared on X a message of condolences for the death of the soldiers.
Since March 20, the national government decided to suspend the ceasefire with the self-proclaimed Central General Staff (EMC) of the FARC in the departments of Nariño, Cauca and Valle del Cauca. This measure was taken in response to an attack perpetrated by that group against a Nasa indigenous community, which resulted in the murder of the indigenous leader Carmelina Yule Paví. Since then, violence in the southwest of the country has worsened.
In this context, on Friday, May 3, a confrontation shook the Argelia corridor, Cauca, when at least 78 men from the special unit of the rapid deployment force number 4 faced almost two hundred criminals from the Carlos Patiño front. Those clashes resulted in the loss of four professional soldiers.
For about 48 hours the bodies remained in the area, which led to the guerrilla group said that the Army had “forgotten” its soldiers. As they expressed in their X account, the Public Force had not recovered any body and, supposedly, it was the same insurgent group that “handed over to the humanitarian mission, faced with abandonment and decomposition.”
However, the Army reported that the delay was related to adverse weather conditions, which complicated rescue operations and access to the Bolivia village, in the municipality of Algeria.. It was not until the afternoon of Sunday, May 5, that the bodies were evacuated.
The military institution explained that, during the fighting, the commander on the ground chose to hide the bodies to protect the wounded, the captured and the soldiers of his unit, facilitating a defensive withdrawal.
The Frac dissidents maintained their version in which they indicated that they had requested mediation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to attend to the bodies of the deceased. However, Snail Radio revealed that the International Committee of the Red Cross in Colombia did not participate in the recovery or delivery of the bodies, contradicting the statements of the armed group.
Fairly, On the afternoon of May 6, two other soldiers died in similar circumstances, in the village of Golondrinas, in the rural area of Silvia, another municipality in Cauca. According to the army, this brigade was attacked with improvised explosive devices by members of the residual organized armed group of the Dagoberto Ramos front, belonging to the self-proclaimed EMC.
