Police in Colombia say that eight foreign tourists have
been kidnapped as they hiked near the Caribbean coast where a so-called
Lost City (Ciudad Perdida) sits in the jungle built by an indigenous civilisation
500 B.C. One British tourist has managed to escape, the remaining seven
tourists are from Israel, the UK, Germany and Spain. Thousands of troops
have been mobilised to search for them in the high mountains of the Sierra
Nevada, 750 kilometres (465 miles) north of the capital, Bogotá.
Most of Colombia's 3,000-odd kidnappings every year – that is one
every four hours – are carried out by FARC (Latin America's biggest
guerrilla group with 17,000 fighters) who use the ransom to fund their
39-year war on the state.