Six Colombian soldiers were killed and eight others wounded during an operation against dissident Marxist rebels, the army said.

The operation was launched against Alvaro Boyaco, the leader of a breakaway group of former FARC guerrillas who refused to abide by a historic 2016 peace deal.

“The wounded soldiers were given emergency assistance by the unit’s combat medics and evacuated” by air to neighboring Caqueta department, the army said in a statement. – “It was investigating the incidents to determine the circumstances surrounding the attack”.

Since breaking away from the FARC, disparate groups of dissidents have continued armed resistence to the government, financing themselves through drug-trafficking and illegal mining.

Authorities say there are around 2 300 such dissidents, while an estimated 13 000 rebels disarmed as part of the peace accord. The more than half century conflict left nine million people dead, missing or displaced.