BOGOTA—A police officer and civilian were killed during violent protests in Colombia’s Caqueta Province on Thursday, and 79 officers and nine oilfield workers were taken hostage by members of rural communities, the government said.
The violence erupted in part of the San Vicente del Caguan municipality, where members of rural and Indigenous communities blocked access to an oil field and set a fire, national police said, to demand Emerald Energy help fix roads.
President Gustavo Petro, who ordered defense and interior officials to the region, decried the killings on Twitter.
“We have a popular movement which by its exclusion and the influence of groups which want to destroy this government and subsume Colombia in war, has ended up murdering a young policeman,” he said….