Colombia police, military raid illegal gold mining operation

MAGUI PAYAN, Colombia (AP) — From the air, the illegal gold mines look like wounds in the dense jungle of southern Colombia — scars of red, gray and brown dirt surrounding toxic ponds.

The sound of the police and military choppers lunging in over the hills sends most of the miners below fleeing into the foliage, with only a few staying behind to try to confront the police and soldiers leaping from the helicopters.

They're quickly subdued with tear gas and the authorities began setting fire to the heavy equipment used to extract gold.

The mine is located in the municipality of Magui Payan, a remote zone of southern Colombia where there's no piped water and communications links are tenuous.

One woman about 40 years old shouts at the soldiers and a handful of journalists accompanying them: “If the state doesn’t let small miners work, I can’t feed my children because the state gives me nothing.”

The rate of extreme poverty tops 80% in the region, according to Mayor Alejandro Juvenal Quiñones.

“We are surviving by work and the grace of the Holy Spirit,” he told The Associated Press.

There's little piety among those running the mines that are the main source of income. They are controlled or at least extorted by organized crime gangs, in this case rival groups of current or former guerrillas from the still-active National Liberation Front and a breakaway faction of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,

Police Lt. Col. Pedro Pablo Astaiza, who led this month's raid, said armed groups demand a 10% cut of everything produced by each excavating machine.

He said the operation immobilized six excavators worth some $330,000 altogether, machinery that can produce about 6 kilograms (13 pounds) of gold a month.

But he said that six months from now,...