Concern over plight of 800 Afro-Colombian refugees

The government should provide humanitarian assistance to the more than 800 Afro-Colombian townspeople displaced by harassment from leftist guerrillas and right-wing militias in the southwestern region of the country, the office of national ombudsman Volmar Perez said.

The refugees come from at least eight villages around Buenaventura, a port city in Valle del Cauca province.

The families began fleeing on March 4, but officials only found out 10 days after the mass exodus started, the ombudsman's office said in a statement.

"This mass displacement event is a result of a series of violent incidents on the part of the illegal armed groups that have been occurring in this rural area during the months of February and March 2011 related to the killings of civilians and confinements of the population in that area of the country," the statement said.

The 30th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrilla group and the new militia groups operate in the area.

The illegal armed groups have been fighting for control of territory for drug production and trafficking, as well as for control of mining.

The ombudsman's office has been warning since December that the violence was increasing in the urban and rural areas around Buenaventura, Colombia's main Pacific port, the statement said.