Mexico criticizes Colombia's Ecuador raid

Photos

Survivor of Colombia's Ecuador raid

see larger image

uploaded by Pat Garcia

• 

  uploaded by Pat Garcia | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Pat Garcia | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Pat Garcia | add comment

[q
url="http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0763044420080307?sp=true"]Reports
that a group of Mexicans may be among the victims of a Colombian strike
on a rebel camp in Ecuador have ignited speculation in Mexico over
whether the country harbours FARC sympathizers.

Some half a dozen Mexicans are believed to have died in last
weekend's attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia camp that
killed a top FARC commander and sparked a diplomatic dispute.

Ecuador said it was working with five Mexican families to confirm
the deaths, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon has ordered an
investigation into the matter.

Colombia's ambassador in Mexico, Luis Camilo Osorio, said it was worrying to think there could be Mexicans in the FARC.

"This student was certainly not there as a tourist," Osorio told Reuters. "You don't go on holiday to a terrorist camp."

FARC supporters of various nationalities opened an office at the
UNAM's leafy Mexico City campus in the 1990s as a base to inform the
world about the rebels' cause.

Washington and Bogota objected and Mexico shut it down in 2002.
Colombia remained suspicious of sympathizer activity however, and its
ambassador to Mexico resigned in 2004 complaining it was easier for
rebels to get a Mexican visa than businessmen.

UNAM students and Morett's father have also denied the philosophy
student is involved with the FARC and say she was in the Ecuadorean
camp as part of a study of guerrilla groups.[/q]

[q
url="http://www.azstarnet.com/news/228720"]Mexico was reeling Friday
from the discovery that at least six Mexican nationals were present at
a rebel camp where a top insurgent commander was killed last weekend in
Ecuador.
Up to five Mexicans were killed in the March 1 attack by
the Colombian military on a rebel base in Ecuador, Ecuadorean security
minister Gustavo Larrea said Friday. A sixth Mexican, 26-year-old Lucia
Morett, survived.
Experts say that it's the first time Mexican
nationals have been known to die alongside members of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's oldest guerrilla
group.
The Mexicans and other visitors from Chile apparently were
planning to speak before a FARC meeting when they were killed.
Journalists given a tour of the camp organized by the Ecuador
government Thursday were shown a classroom area.
The Mexican
presence at the camp added to questions of a possible link between FARC
and a spate of pipeline bombings in Mexico last year. Mexican political
analysts and police officials have said the pipeline bombings were so
sophisticated that whoever did them may have received special training.
Unheard of until last year in Mexico, pipeline bombings have long been
carried out in Colombia by the FARC. Mexico is the United States'
second-largest oil supplier.[/q] 

Ecuador, Mexico probe deaths of Mexicans in raid

[q
url="http://www.reuters.com/article/americasCrisis/idUSN06246962"]QUITO,
March 6 (Reuters) - Ecuador and Mexico are investigating whether up to
10 Mexicans, possibly students and professors, died in a weekend air
strike that killed a top Colombian rebel leader and sparked a heated
diplomatic dispute in the Andean region.

 
Mexican student Lucia Morett, in her 20s, was wounded in the
attack on the rebel base and is being held and treated at a military
hospital in Ecuador. Her father told Mexican media she was a drama
student working on an academic thesis in Ecuador.

 
Colombian forces bombed a rebel camp in Ecuador, killing the
No. 2 leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
The incursion infuriated Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who sent
troops to its border and cut diplomatic ties with Bogota.

 
More than 20 others died in the attack.

 
"There are chances that some of those bodies are Mexicans,"
Ecuador's Security Minister Gustavo Larrea told reporters in Quito on
Thursday. He said five Mexican families were working with Ecuador to
try to identify bodies.

 
Mexico's Foreign Ministry said it was working with Ecuador to
establish whether there were Mexicans other than Morett in the camp.

 
Morett's presence at the cap sparked speculation in Mexico
and Colombia that FARC rebels have a support organization in Mexico.
But other reports said the Mexicans who may have died in the camp were
there to study the FARC.

 
, the country's
biggest public university, said in a statement that Morett had studied
there and said it was concerned other people from the university may
have been killed.

[/q]

UNAM (The National Autonomous University of Mexico) denies the assistance of their students to a congress in Quito. 

[q
url="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/ElFinanciero/Portal/cfpages/contentmgr.cfm?docId=108795&docTipo=1&orderby=docid&sortby=ASC"]La
UNAM niega asistencia de estudiantes a congreso en Quito
Nacional - Jueves 6 de marzo (16:35 hrs.)[/q]

[q
url="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/190013,extra-farc-rebel-describes-colombia-attack-planes-bombs-shouts.html"]Bogota
- A Mexican woman who was fighting with Colombian rebels Tuesday
described Colombia's attack on the rebel camp in Ecuador that killed
the insurgent group's number two and triggered rising tensions in the
region. "I was asleep, and suddenly I was woken up by a bombing, many
bombs. We could hear planes and helicopters that started to hurl bombs
at where we were, and then there was a strong burning smell," Lucrecia
Arboleda told Colombia's Caracol television channel from a hospital in
Quito.
 
The woman, a Mexican citizen fighting for the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) under the alias "Lucia,"
said the attack by Colombian forces on Ecuadorian soil started shortly
after midnight Saturday, while the rebels were asleep.
 
"I
started to feel that (the bombs) fell very close to where I was, and
then heard shooting. After a while we could hear shouting," the rebel
said.
 
"Lucia" said the bombing was renewed some three hours later.
 
"I
did not move from there because I realized that I was injured, I could
not move. I just dragged myself aside a little bit," she said.
 
The woman was rescued from the site by Ecuadorian authorities, along with two other injured Colombian female rebels.
 
The attack killed rebel second in command Raul Reyes and 20 other rebels.[/q]