A Colombian family of six, including one child, was massacred by an armed group in a region of northern Colombia where crops are grown to make cocaine, police said today.
The machine-gun slayings took place yesterday in Zaragoza, a town in Antioquia province, and may have been carried out by former right-wing militia members, they said.
Many paramilitary fighters who demobilized as part of a government-negotiated peace plan live in this part of the country, a provincial official told reporters.
"This type of crime is predictable when you have former paramilitaries, who don't have any job skills that are not related to crime, roaming around," said Mauricio Romero, political analyst at Bogota's Rosario University.
"One of the weakest points of the demobilization is the part involving job training and other efforts to re-integrate the former paramilitaries," he said.
Some demobilized paramilitaries, who turned in their arms in exchange for benefits including reduced prison sentences, have splintered off into criminal groups linked to drug smuggling and extortion, military and human rights officials say.
President Alvaro Uribe, popular for his US-backed crackdown on left-wing rebels and for demobilizing more than 30,000 paramilitaries, won re-election in a landslide in May.
Uribe, sworn in to begin his second term yesterday, has promised to continue his tough security measures and reduce the poverty that afflicts about half of Colombia's population.
At least 32 Colombians, mostly soldiers and police, died in bombings and other attacks carried out last week by Marxist rebels in a show of force in the run-up to Uribe's second inauguration.
Colombia is the world's biggest exporter of cocaine. Violence linked to the trade has plagued this Andean country for decades and fuels a guerrilla war that began in the 1960s.
Both the rebels and their paramilitary enemies are linked to the cocaine business are are known to massacre peasants suspected of cooperating with the other side.