Rebels Abduct 7 Journalists in Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia — Leftist rebels abducted seven Colombian journalists Friday and demanded that the reporters’ employers publish a guerrilla text, officials said.
The kidnapping occurred just three days after a different rebel group seized a photographer from Reuters news agency elsewhere in the South American country.
Journalists traditionally have been respected by Colombia’s belligerents as neutral observers, but with this week’s rash of abductions, many feared that status was in jeopardy.
Those taken Friday were grabbed by Colombia’s main guerrilla band from a boat on the Magdalena River after departing the northeastern oil-refining city of Barrancabermeja, said Col. Jaime Martinez, the city police chief.
The reporters, including television crews from the country’s two major networks, had hired a boat to get to San Pablo, a town in rebel territory where the army was fighting guerrillas.
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