Another massacre brings death toll to 45 in Colombia this month

Three people have been killed in north-western Colombia, bringing the death toll to 45 in nine massacres in the country this month, local media reported on Friday.

Masked men entered a farm near Andes municipality in Antioquia department late Thursday, a police spokesman told broadcaster Caracol.

They began shooting indiscriminately, killing three people. One of the victims was a child, whose age was reported as 13 or 14 years.

Concern has grown in the Andean country over a wave of violence which the government attributes to armed groups.

A peace deal signed with the guerrilla movement FARC in 2016 formally ended a 52-year conflict.

But FARC dissidents, the guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitaries and criminal gangs continue seeking control over territory to engage in cocaine smuggling and other illicit activities.

Recent massacres included that of five adolescents in the city of Cali on August 11. Two people have now been arrested in connection with those killings, President Ivan Duque announced on Friday.

The suspects were reported to have worked as guards in the area with sugar cane fields where the massacre occurred, but there was no immediate information on their possible motives.

Armed groups are believed to kill civilians in order to terrorize local people into accepting their rule and to force young people to join their ranks. Other killings are thought to be related to turf wars.

Some 1,000 civil society leaders and more than 200 former FARC fighters have also been assassinated since the peace agreement was signed in 2016, according to the NGO Indepaz.