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BOGOTA, Sept 30 (Reuters) – About 1,900 fighters belonging to Colombian rebel and crime groups are operating from Venezuela, where they plan attacks and participate in drug trafficking, the commander of Colombia’s armed forces said.

The Colombian government has long said Venezuela’s leadership grants safe harbor to Colombian armed groups, allowing trafficking of cocaine in exchange for a cut of the profits.

But it is the first time the military has given a figure for the number it believes are operating from the neighboring country.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denied that Venezuela has provided safe harbor for drug traffickers. But he has expressed sympathy for rebels’ leftist ideology and openly welcomed some guerrilla leaders.

Around half of the 2,350 known combatants from the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group are in Venezuela, along with about a third of the 2,400 fighters who belong to dissident groups of former FARC guerrillas who reject a 2016 peace deal, General Luis Fernando Navarro told Reuters late on Wednesday.

“In total in the (Venezuelan) states of Zulia, Tachira, Apure and Amazonas, we calculate there could be between 1,100 and 1,200 criminals from the ELN and some 700 from the FARC dissidents,” Navarro said.

“It’s a factor of instability that the strategic rearguard of these structures is in Venezuelan border states. This obviously makes it difficult to combat them,” said Navarro, accusing the Venezuelan armed forces of not pursuing the groups.

The Venezuelan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Colombia’s internal conflict has stretched for nearly 60 years and led to more than 260,000 deaths.

Though the demobilization of some 13,000 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) under the 2016 accord lead to a reduction in violence, some areas have seen renewed fighting as dissidents, the ELN and crime gangs descended from right-wing paramilitaries battle for territory.

The violence often crosses the border. In Venezuela’s northwestern Zulia state, a local government and a major employer were paying villagers including children to staff narcotics operations, extortion rackets and illegal gold mines, a Reuters report found earlier this year.

Some 80 Venezuelans fight for FARC dissident groups, Navarro said, and some 180 for the ELN.

Commanders from dissident group Segunda Marquetalia, including former peace negotiator Ivan Marquez, Hernan Dario Velasquez and Henry Castellanos are living in Venezuela, he said, as is ELN leader Gustavo Anibal Giraldo, known by his alias Pablito.

The groups attack targets in Colombia and then melt across the border to evade authorities, Navarro said.

One FARC dissident group has taken responsibility for two incidents in June – a car bombing at a military base in the border city of Cucuta which injured dozens, and the shooting of a helicopter carrying President Ivan Duque.

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By Juliana Kochs, CNN

Sao Paulo (CNN)- So-called “vaccine passports” have been reinstated in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, just one day after a local judge suspended them for being too divisive.

At the request of the city government, Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday annulled a ruling by Judge Paulo Rangel that had briefly prohibited requiring of proof of vaccination to enter certain public venues.

Residents will again be required to prove they’ve been vaccinated in order to attend events and enter communal facilities such as gyms, museums and tourist venues.

Rangel had described the requirement as “tyrannical.”

“The decree [to implement vaccine passports] divides society into two types: the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, preventing the unvaccinated from circulating freely,” Rangel said.

Over half a million Brazilians have died in the pandemic — the highest death toll in the world after the United States. Today, some form of vaccine passport is in place in more than 200 other towns and cities across Brazil, including in the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo. Each regional authority decides on its own regulations.

Rio’s vaccine pass system was introduced in mid-September under Mayor Eduardo Paes. Without mentioning the suspension directly, Paes tweeted: “Sometimes I wonder how some people can accept that smoking is banned in the office, mall, subway… and also accept that the use of seat belts is mandatory! Do these people not feel restricted in their individual freedoms? Just to reflect….”

But Rangel is hardly alone in his doubts about the system. President Jair Bolsonaro — who has long downplayed the severity of Covid-19 — has battled such precautions and openly criticized the idea of a vaccine passport.

Bolsonaro personally flouted vaccination rules at the United Nations headquarters in New York earlier this month, addressing the global body in person despite not having received the vaccine.

“Why do you take a vaccine? To have antibodies, right? My antibodies rate is really high. I can show you the document,” said the president, who recovered from Covid-19 last year.

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GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Ecuador on Thursday sought to identify the remains of the 116 inmates killed during a riot at one of its largest prisons earlier this week, the latest bout of violence authorities have linked to gangs vying for control of drug trafficking routes.

Dozens of relatives of inmates at the Penitenciaria del Litoral in the country’s largest city of Guayaquil gathered outside a morgue seeking information on loved ones, after the deadliest outbreak of prison violence in Ecuador’s history on Tuesday in which 80 people were also injured.

Police investigators asked family members for photographs of inmates or details of features like scars or tattoos to help them identify bodies.

Police commander Tannya Varela told reporters that the casualty count could rise, as officers were still investigating. Earlier on Thursday, the national police sent 400 officers to regain control of the detention center. Soldiers also entered the prison to maintain order.”We have not yet completed the intervention in the penitentiary, so it is possible that there are other bodies inside, and some of the injured could die from their wounds,” Varela said.

The violence came after 79 and 22 people died in prison riots in February and July, respectively. Authorities linked the earlier clashes to rival local gangs with ties to transnational criminal groups battling for control over Ecuador’s drug trade.

According to Mario Pazmino, a colonel and former intelligence director for Ecuador’s army, the clashes have increased and grown bloodier recently as Mexican drug cartels, such as the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels, have formed alliances with local gangs.

While not a large drug producer, Ecuador is a major transit hub for cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru bound for the United States and Europe, much of it concealed in legitimate container cargo departing from Guayaquil’s port, according to a U.S. State Department report from March.

“This presence of drug trafficking is reflected in a permanent fight over pathways and territory from where drugs leave, and that is what is being replicated in the detention centers, as well as cities where score-settling and assassinations take place,” Pazmino told Reuters.

Asked on Wednesday night whether this week’s clash was linked to drug trafficking, Fausto Cobo, director of Ecuador’s Center for Strategic Intelligence, said the violence was “connected with other serious problems.”

“This is a problem that goes beyond an issue with the penal system,” Cobo told reporters. “It is a threat against the Ecuadorian state.”

‘THIS CANNOT KEEP HAPPENING’

Outside the morgue in Guayaquil, Paola Moreira awaited news of her 24-year-old brother Bryan, who was set to be released from the Penitenciaria del Litoral in just one month.

“He called me on Wednesday at noon and asked me to please help, that everyone from section five had been killed and only two were alive, but our hands were tied and we could not do anything for him,” said Moreira, 26. “So I have come here to wait.”

In a statement posted on Twitter, Ecuador’s chief prosecutor’s office said it was still working on identifying the victims – at least six of whom it said on Tuesday had been decapitated.

Prison overcrowding and underfunding is a major problem across South America and has contributed to riots in recent years in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, as well as Ecuador. President Guillermo Lasso said on Wednesday he would free up funds and send additional security forces to prisons.

“They have killed so many young men, this cannot keep happening,” Moreira said.

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GENEVA/NAIROBI, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Only 15 of Africa’s 54 nations have fully vaccinated 10% of their populations against COVID-19 and many frontline health workers remain at risk, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Council of Nurses (ICN) said on Thursday.

They called for speeding up distribution of doses to those at risk on the continent amid what the WHO called “opaque delivery plans” and “bottlenecks” in the rollout of vaccines in Africa.

The WHO had called for vaccinating at least 10% of health workers in every country by Sept. 30 – a target met by nearly 90% of high-income countries, the United Nations health agency said.

Half of the 52 African countries that have received COVID-19 vaccines have fully vaccinated just 2% or less of their populations, WHO’s regional office in Brazzaville said in a statement.

Howard Catton, chief executive officer of the Geneva-based ICN, told Reuters that it analysed data from nine African countries.

It showed that approximately a third of health workers were still waiting for their first dose of vaccine and only about 10 percent had been fully vaccinated.

“Despite the promises, we are not seeing the delivery And this is a health and a human rights crisis,” he said. “Today nurses and health workers are still going to work knowing that they are at higher risk, but not having the protection of vaccine.”

In the meantime, some rich countries are already administering booster shots and vaccines to youth, he said.

“You know, we have just seen a billionaire send a healthcare worker into space, yet, here on earth, we have millions of healthcare workers still waiting to be vaccinated. They shouldn’t have to wish on a star for a vaccine, they should be prioritized,” Catton said.

Richard Mihigo, coordinator for the WHO’s Immunization and Vaccines Development Programme Africa, told a briefing: “What the data is showing us – in the 39 countries where we were able to collect that information, 8% of all the doses administered in those 39 countries were administered to healthcare workers.”

Some healthcare workers in remote rural areas have not been reached, he said.

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World  Summary

Oct 1 (Reuters) – Australia will lift one of the toughest international border restrictions on its citizens next month, while neighbouring New Zealand logged more Delta coronavirus infections in its capital city. read more

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* Pupils will from Oct. 4 no longer have to wear protective face masks in French primary schools in areas with a low COVID-19 infection rate, according to a government decree. read more

* The European Union will extend a mechanism to monitor and potentially limit the export of COVID-19 vaccines from the bloc, an EU official said. read more

AMERICAS

* A U.S. judge upheld the University of California’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement against a challenge by a professor who alleged he had immunity due to a prior coronavirus infection.

* United Airlines has trimmed the number of employees who are facing termination for defying the company’s vaccine mandate. The Chicago-based carrier said 320 U.S.-based staff are now not in compliance.

* Los Angeles officials on Wednesday signalled they would vote next week to prohibit unvaccinated people from entering most businesses in the United States’ second-largest city. read more

ASIA-PACIFIC

* South Korea extended social distancing curbs for two weeks, offering more incentives to people to get vaccinated as it battles thousands of new cases each day. read more

* Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical said that “human error” caused metal contaminants to get into Moderna vaccine doses, leading to a recall. read more

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has eased restrictions to the lowest alert level, as the country looks to open up its economy ahead of the summer holiday season. read more

* Egypt on Thursday received 1.6 million doses of the vaccine produced by Pfizer as a gift from the United States as part of the COVAX initiative, the first batch of a total of 5 million doses. read more

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* Malaysia has given conditional approval for a vaccine made by China’s Sinovac to be used on young people aged between 12 and 17. read more

* It is safe for people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and a flu shot at the same time and it does not negatively impact the immune response produced by either, a British study has found.

WORLD STATS

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