Ecuadoran authorities are trying to detemrine if five students and professors from Mexico "carrying out investigations in the zone" were killed in Colombia's March 1 air-strike on a FARC guerilla camp in the Ecuadoran Amazon. At least one Mexican student apparently wounded in the attack has asserted that five of their comrades were killed, according to Ecuador's Security Minister Gustavo Larrea. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it is "working with Ecuador and Colombia to corroborate reports of two Mexicans who possibly died in the incident."

Some 40,000 people took part in a Bogotá march for victims of Colombia's paramilitary and armed forces. Organized by the State Crimes Victims Movement (MOVICE), the march was a direct response to last month's mobilization against the FARC guerillas. The Bogotá march was joined by a three-day cross-country procession, mostly by campesinos, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians from the war-torn departments of Chocó and Cauca, which swelled along the way with marchers from Colombia's central departments of Tolima, Huila and Cundinamarca. The BBC reported that "hundreds of thousands" marched in local mobilizations in cities and towns across the country.

In a disconcerting Feb. 29 clip from Cuba's Prensa Latina, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez suggests that CIA-backed "anarchists" could be behind recent campus violence and bomb attacks in the country:

The conservative attack on the regional elections slated for November in Venezuela and emerging anarchism caused President Hugo Chavez to call for revolutionary discipline.

Colombia's Constitutional Court has issued a ruling upholding the rights of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in the northern war-torn Urabá region, ordering the Colombian government to take steps to end the state of impunity in the crimes committed against the community since its formation ten years ago.

The Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution March 5 declaring the Colombian military raid into Ecuador a violation of sovereignty. The resolution was approved in Washington after talks in which the United States was the hemisphere's only nation explicitly supporting Colombia. While the measure stopped short of condemning Colombia for the raid, Ecuador's Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador said: "We consider this agreement a triumph for the concept that every nation's territory cannot be violated whatever the reason. Ecuador is a peaceful country that had been dragged into this unfortunate situation."

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe upped the rhetorical ante against Venezuela March 4, accusing Hugo Chávez of supporting "genocide" and threatening to bring charges against him at The Hague. "Colombia proposes to denounce Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, in the International Criminal Court for sponsoring and financing genocide," Uribe said. "We are not warmongers, but we are not weak. We cannot allow terrorists who seek refuge in other countries to spill the blood of our countrymen." (Reuters, March 4)

A car bomber tried to hit a government building in the Tani district of Afghanistan's eastern Khost province March 3, but Afghan guards opened fire. A police officer was killed and five others, including an Afghan soldier, were wounded in the ensuing explosion. The attack came a day after a bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the gates of another government building in the Yaqoubi district of Khost province. Four were killed in that attack—two NATO soldiers and two Afghan civilians—and 19 other people, including 15 soldiers, were wounded, officials said. Although the nationality of the NATO soldiers was not released, most of the troops in Khost are from the US. (AP, March 4)

The idiot left has lost no time in blasting Kosova's declaration of independence. The latest spew from New York's International Action Center screams "US Hands Off Serbia!" and cheers the Belgrade protests (where wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic was hailed as a hero) and the attack on the US embassy there. Predictably, the statement barely mentions the Albanians—and then only to note that almost a quarter of them have been forced to leave Kosova to seek work abroad. The uninitiated reading this propaganda would have no idea that the Albanians constitute over 90% of Kosova's population, and that they overwhelmingly—practically unanimously, it seems—support independence. Fortunately, there have been a few principled voices on the left who have had more honest things to say about Kosova...