BOGOTA - Right-wing militiamen shot dead 17 people in attacks across a southern drug-producing region of Colombia, officials said Tuesday.
In simultaneous assaults early Sunday, two 60-man paramilitary squads attacked the villages of El Placer and La Dorada - in Putumayo state, 340 miles south of Bogota - said regional army commander Maj. Carlos Alberto Granobles.
"They came dressed as soldiers, with armbands of the self-defense groups," he said.
Both the right-wing militias - which call themselves self-defense groups -and leftist rebels often target civilians they suspect of sympathizing with their enemies.
Nine men and two women were killed in El Placer, four men in La Dorada, and two more in the nearby hamlet of El Vergel.
According to the head of the Colombian armed forces, Sunday's killings were the latest in a chain of violence as warring groups vie for control of the region's flourishing drugs trade.
"It's a dispute for coca money," Gen. Fernando Tapias told reporters.
The production of coca, the raw material for cocaine, has dramatically increased in recent years in Putumayo state, which borders Ecuador.
In May, militiamen killed 11 men in the region, including at least four in El Placer.