Killings, violence wrack rural Colombia - Red Cross

Murder, rape and general violence have driven tens of thousands from their homes in rural Colombia in the last year in a problem ignored during the presidential election campaign, the ICRC said on Monday. Indigenous communities and those descended from African slaves in the south and along the Pacific coast were the worst hit, the humanitarian organization's chief representative in the Latin American country said. "Many are being forced to flee because of threats to their lives. Other are subjected to extra-judicial killings or to sexual violence, and yet most of their tragedies go unreported," the official, Christophe Beney, told a news conference. The Swiss-based ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, had recorded some 800 alleged violations of global humanitarian law over the past year, all linked to fighting involving the army, paramilitaries and Marxist rebels, he said.