BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's FARC rebels attacked an energy pylon in the southern province Caqueta, leaving 500,000 people without electricity, the military said on Thursday as the Marxist group steps up attacks on infrastructure amid stumbling peace talks.
FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, early on Thursday also detonated explosives on a stretch of road that connects southeastern Cauca with the center of the country.
The 8,000-strong FARC lifted a unilateral ceasefire about three weeks ago and has since hit almost daily at roadways, energy networks, and oil trucks and installations.
The insurgent group has been in talks with the government for the last 30 months, seeking to end a 51-year conflict that has killed almost a quarter of a million people.
Tension mounted at discussions in Cuba in recent weeks when the FARC killed 11 soldiers as they sheltered from the rain, essentially breaking the ceasefire established in December. Government troops then killed 27 rebel fighters, prompting the FARC to renew hostilities.
The group, which began in 1964 as a peasant movement, wants President Juan Manuel Santos to agree to a bilateral ceasefire, and analysts reckon the latest attacks are aimed at angering Colombians so they pressure him to call a truce.
He has so far refused.
Negotiators are working through a five-point agenda that includes victim reparations, agricultural reform and elimination of the cocaine trade, as well as demobilization and rebel political participation.
Several thousand barrels of crude oil spilled into a river in southwest Colombia on Monday after the FARC bombed a pipeline owned by state-run oil company Ecopetrol. Its chief executive officer, Juan Carlos Echeverry, called the damage an "environmental tragedy."