Catatumbo campaign
| Catatumbo campaign | |||||||||
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| Part of the Colombian conflict (1964–present) the War on Drugs (1993–present) and the Crisis in Venezuela (2010–present) | |||||||||
ELN fighters in Catatumbo, 2019 | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Popular Liberation Army (EPL) |
National Liberation Army (ELN)
| FARC dissidents | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 132 | 2,500 | 33–200 | 5,600+ | ||||||
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Total casualties: 893+ deaths 40,000+ displaced estimate as of April 2019 | |||||||||
| Part of a series on the |
| Crisis in Venezuela |
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| Venezuela portal |
The Catatumbo campaign has been an ongoing period of strategic violence between militia faction groups in the Catatumbo region of Colombia and Venezuela since January 2018. It is an extension of the war on drugs and developed after the Colombian peace process of 2016. The existence of the war was officially announced in August 2019 after a Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigation. Colombian media reports that the war has directly affected an estimated 145,000 people, with the HRW estimating this at 300,000.