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Nine soldiers killed, six injured in Colombia attack

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Nine soldiers killed, six injured in Colombia attack

Nine soldiers have been killed and six others injured in an attack carried out by a leftist guerrilla group in northeastern Colombia near the border with Venezuela.

Officials blamed the late Tuesday attack on the National Liberation Army (ELN).

“Six heroes of our army (died) in an ELN attack in Norte de Santander. Our hearts are with their families,” Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos said in a message on Twitter on Wednesday.

The army, however, later raised the death toll to nine, saying they died late Tuesday when “home-made explosives” detonated in the municipality of Chitaga, in the department of Norte de Santander.

On April 14, ELN guerrillas killed three soldiers in the nearby department of Arauca.

Colombia has been experiencing violent conflict since the 1960s, when peasant guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the ELN took up arms against the government.

The FARC has been hammering out peace terms with government negotiators since November to end five decades of war that has killed more than 100,000 people. The government wants a peace agreement signed by the end of this year.

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