30 Kidnapped in Colombia; Rebels Blamed

In Colombia’s third mass kidnapping in 17 months, about 30 diners were abducted Sunday afternoon from three restaurants on the outskirts of Cali by suspected rebel gunmen, who disappeared with them into the surrounding mountains, police said.

Police said the kidnappers were probably members of one of Colombia’s leftist rebel factions, although they did not say why they believed that insurgents were involved. Neither Colombia’s most powerful rebel army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the initials FARC, nor the smaller National Liberation Army, whose initials in Spanish are ELN, immediately claimed or denied responsibility.

The Cuban-inspired ELN previously has resorted to bold kidnapping tactics in trying to pressure the government into making territorial concessions that could pave the way to peace talks. Those mass abductions have increased the feeling of insecurity in a nation that suffered 3,000 kidnappings last year, half of them blamed on rebel groups who use the ransoms to help finance their 36-year-old civil conflict.

In May of last year, the ELN shocked the nation by abducting more than 140 Cali churchgoers during Mass. Just one month earlier, the same group hijacked a mid-size commercial airliner and detained all 46 passengers and crew members; three victims from that group abduction remain in rebel hands.

Months after those kidnappings, the government offered to cede some northern municipalities to the ELN as a goodwill gesture toward negotiations, but the two sides have yet to set a date for talks to begin.

The ordeal Sunday began at 4:30 p.m. when approximately 50 gunmen wearing camouflage fatigues entered three restaurants along the road leading west from Cali to the Pacific port town of Buenaventura, witnesses told police. At each stop, police said, the gunmen forced people into cars and drove off.

Later, air force helicopters assisted ground troops, including members of a local anti-kidnapping unit, as they fanned out into the foothills several miles west of Cali in search of the abductors and their victims, a police spokesman said. The kidnappers also stole five vehicles, he said, later abandoning two of them.

Sunday’s mass kidnapping also coincided with a military announcement that 19 soldiers had died in weekend clashes with the FARC in the northwestern Uraba region. An additional two dozen soldiers were reported missing, military sources said.