LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 30 May 2017

Paraguay: President Horacio Cartes has appointed Colonel Héctor Alcides Grau as the new commander of the military-police task force (FTC) tasked with combating the insurgent Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP) guerrillas in the north of the country, replacing General Julio Gerardo Brugada. This is the seventh change at the helm of the FTC made by Cartes since he ordered its creation in 2013 to combat the EPP, which continues to terrorise the population in the northern departments of Concepción and San Pedro despite the FTC’s deployment. Colonel Grau’s appointment comes after a late April armed attack registered at a ranch in Concepción, in which one ranch hand was killed, was attributed to the EPP; and following local media reports that the FTC failed to capture EPP leaders during a botched operation carried out in Concepción department in mid-May.

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