Armed group clashes displace 14 in Colombia; pregnant woman killed by stray bullet

In the rural municipality of Peque, in Colombia's Antioquia department, fourteen campesinos arrived at the municipal ombudsman's office on a February morning, having fled their homes in Nueva Granada. They came because they were afraid. Behind them lay the reason: a pregnant woman, dead from a stray bullet fired during a clash between illegal armed groups.

Elizabet Orrego Torres was twenty-nine years old and nine months pregnant when she was killed on January 24th in the rural sector of Buena Vista, in the Corregimiento of Renegado Valle. The bullet that struck her came during a firefight between the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AGC, and dissident factions of the former FARC guerrilla. She lived in a place caught between two armed forces, and that is where she died.

The municipal ombudsman, Juan Diego Fernández, received the fourteen displaced residents and began providing humanitarian assistance. But he knew this was only the beginning. He told radio journalists that nearly two hundred people lived in Nueva Granada and the surrounding rural areas, and most of them wanted to leave. The problem was practical and brutal: the armed conflict had restricted transportation in and out of the municipality. There was no way to move people to safety. "We have sustained gunfire and constant combat between armed groups," Fernández said. The roads were closed. The fighting was ongoing.

Circulating through the communities were pamphlets bearing the names of thirteen people marked for death. The armed groups claimed these individuals were collaborators with the guerrilla and with the AGC—accusations that may or may not have been true, but in a place where bullets travel without discrimination, the distinction hardly mattered. The threat was enough. People packed what they could and moved toward the urban center, hoping distance would mean safety.

Three rural villages—La Candelaria, Nueva Llanada, and Renegado Valle—were now under what authorities called confinement. Residents could not move freely. One entire village, Las Toldas, had relocated entirely to Nueva Llanada, where people were now crowded together, still trapped. Yesid Zapata, a spokesperson for the human rights organization Proceso Social de Garantías, described the situation as worsening daily. The armed groups, he said, were using civilians as shields. The government needed to send military forces to protect the people still living in the municipality.

Fernández made the same appeal to authorities: send protection. Secure the territory. The fourteen people now in his office represented only the first wave. He expected more to arrive as fear deepened and conditions deteriorated. The municipality of Peque had become a place where pregnancy itself was a death sentence, where living in your own home meant standing in the crossfire of a conflict you did not choose and could not escape. The question now was whether the state would arrive before the rest of Nueva Granada decided they had no choice but to leave.