BOGOTA - Protests resumed across Colombia on Tuesday, with three police officers and one demonstrator injured and 13 buses and six bus stations vandalized, said authorities. Labor unions, students, teachers, indigenous groups and feminist organizations first started striking in November, channeling a wave of discontent over a lack of educational opportunities, the slow implementation of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the killings of civic leaders and a rooted inequality in Colombian society. Protesters stood by the same demands in the latest demonstrations Protester Luis Ramirez, a professor at the National University of Colombia, told Anadolu that he has plenty of reasons to be in the streets. “After 50 years of war, we now can think of inequity, corruption scandals that have eroded our faith in the political class and the murder of social leaders,” he said. According to Indepaz, an NGO that carries out long-term projects in the pursuit of peace in Colombia, more than 20 social leaders have been killed during the first days of the year. Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez urged protesters to hold peaceful rallies to avoid intervention by anti-riot police. But the protests turned violent when police clashed with demonstrators who blocked roads.

UN urges joint strategy to tackle violence in DRC

ANKARA (GN): The UN on Tuesday urged its peacekeeping mission and Congolese authorities to devise a joint strategy to tackle insecurity in the country’s east as well as the Ebola virus outbreak. The UN statement came after “an independent assessment” into violent attacks allegedly committed by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group which is reportedly active in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “The assessment team [..] sought to establish the circumstances surrounding the attacks in Beni, located in North Kivu province, as well as assaults in Mambasa territory in neighboringIturi province targeting the national and international response to the deadly Ebola virus outbreak,” read the statement. In the last two months rebels have killed 150 civilians in Beni and neighboring towns triggering angry protests and in some cases storming of UN facilities. A military operation was launched last October in the eastern part of the country against armed groups. The army in November killed MouhamedMukubwa, one of the top leaders of the ADF, at a forest in Beni. Local authorities and civil society groups say the ADF has killed more than 1,000 people in the Beni region since 2014.