Pallade Veneta - 'We want peace': Colombians swept up in bloody guerrilla violence

"We want Peace," they wrote in block capitals on a huge white banner in the town of Teorama in Catatumbo region, where at least 80 people have been killed and 40,000 displaced in a turf war linked to the cocaine trade.

The bloodshed in the area bordering Venezuela has been blamed on the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), which is accused of going house to house through towns and villages to kill dissident members of the defunct FARC guerrilla army and their sympathizers.

The ELN's attacks, which began on January 16, blindsided the government of left-wing President Gustavo Petro, who had been in on-off peace talks with the biggest rebel army in the Americas and is threatening the group with "war."

Four days since he made the threat, the military is still nowhere to be seen in the lush, green mountains which are carpeted in coca plants, the main ingredient in cocaine.

- White flags -

On the dusty roads that wind through broad river valleys, heavily-armed, hooded ELN members man checkpoints aimed at keeping both their ex-FARC rivals and the state at bay.

Desperate to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, civilians have tied white flags to their cars or outside the windows of their homes.

"These wars have been going on for years," lamented Luz Franco, a 44-year-old grocery store owner in the village of El Aserrio.

On the first day of the ELN's offensive on January 16, grocery store owner Franco barricaded herself inside her shop with her husband and two children.

"The whole town locked itself in that day, everyone was frantically looking for shelter," she told AFP.

Residents said the guerrillas went door-to-door in search of their targets, attacking FARC members who had laid down arms as well as dissidents and civilians.

The owner of a restaurant, who did not wish to be identified for fear of reprisal, told AFP that her husband was held for four days by the guerrillas and was now afraid to venture outdoors.

A baby and two young teens were among those killed, Colombia's chief forensic officer Jorge Arturo Jimenez said, without giving details about the circumstances of their deaths.

The attack has caused an exodus from the region, with some people seeking shelter across the border in Venezuela, taking the opposite direction to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled their country's economic meltdown in recent years.

Colombia's public protector's office said this week there were still five people missing.

- 'Moment of crisis' -

"We are in a moment of crisis," said Edgar Guerrero, a 34-year-old community leader in El Aserrio, adding residents had been caught off guard by the fighting which came after two years of relative peace.

Guerrero accused Petro's government of failing to keep its promise to prioritize the Catatumbo region in its peace efforts.

Since coming to power in 2022, Petro has emphasized de-escalation and dialogue with the plethora of armed groups vying to fill the void left by FARC.

Critics argue his conciliatory approach emboldened groups that claim to be fighting on behalf of the rural poor but are funded mainly by cocaine and other trafficking, and say it gave them space to expand.

The battle between the armed groups for influence in Catatumbo is writ large in the posters and banners pasted on buildings and streets.

An ELN banner in Teorama touting the group's 60-year-old insurgency features the image of a masked woman brandishing a rifle and a man wielding a hammer and sickle, a communist symbol.

Those of the rival 33rd Front of FARC dissidents exalts FARC commanders in fatigues and Marxist revolutionaries, such as Che Guevara.

While the FARC dissidents have been mostly on the receiving end of the recent violence, many Catatumbo residents fear they are just biding their time before taking revenge.

R.Zarlengo--PV