Colombia conflict: UN begins removing rebel weapons

About 7,000 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia finished turning over their weapons in late June.

Bogota, Aug 1: The United Nations has begun removing containers holding more than 7,000 weapons that belonged to former fighters for Colombia's largest rebel group who are beginning life as civilians under a peace agreement.

The weapons were removed from demobilisation zones where the arms were handed over.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says the removal operation that began yesterday marks the end of a cease-fire started in June 2016.

Photos provided by the UN show stacks of worn black rifles wrapped in plastic inside containers.

About 7,000 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia finished turning over their weapons in late June.

The guns will eventually be melted down to construct three peace monuments. Colombia's armed conflict lasted more than five decades and left at least 250,000 people dead and another 60,000 disappeared.

The Colombian Conflict began in the mid-1960s and was a low-intensity asymmetric war between Colombian governments, paramilitary groups, crime syndicates, and left-wing guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the National Liberation Army (ELN), fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory.

PTI