Colombia's state prosecutor is investigating the disappearanceand possible murder of at least 32 peasants by far-right paramilitaries in the remote locality of Naya.
Local television reported that investigators had so far confirmed six killings by the paramilitary gangs. Murders by right-wing paramilitaries are common. They often accuse peasants of collaborating with leftist rebels.
The channel showed images of the body of a adolescent woman being exhumed from a shallow grave. Her throat had been cut and her hands cut off.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the figure of 32 killings with the prosecutor's office. Colombia's official ombudsman told reporters on Saturday that over 25 people had been killed in Naya by paramilitaries.
Colombia is locked in a 37-year-old, three-way war pitting leftist guerrillas against the armed forces and the illegal paramilitaries. About 40,000 people have been killed in fighting in the past 10 years alone, and two million others have been forced to flee their homes.
Hundreds of peasants began to flee from the area, which can only be reached by hours on foot or mule, when a squad of several hundred members of the paramilitary United Self-Defense orces of Colombia, or AUC, marched in early last week.
The refugees told of people murdered with knives and their bodies dumped by the road.
Despite public revulsion at the paramilitaries' often brutal methods, their ranks are estimated to have grown nine-fold to 8,000 fighters in the past eight years.
They are funded by ranchers and businessmen tired of the inability of the armed forces to defeat the rebels and draw substantial funds from the massive localcocaine trade.