E/CN.4/1995/111 page 22 654 violent deaths were said to have occurred in Cali alone. From July to September, an average of 140 violent deaths per month was reported for Cali. In 80 per cent of these cases, the victims were said to have been killed with firearms. In addition, the Personería (see para. 76 (c) below) had accounted for 877 cases of disappearances up to May 1994. In 415 of these cases, the whereabouts of the missing persons remain unknown. 69. According to the information received, the situation in the department is marked by the predominance of three drug cartels: the Cartel de Cali, the Cartel del Centro del Valle based in the region of Buga/Tuluá, and the Cartel del Norte del Valle, in the area of Cartago/Pereira. In urban areas, drug-related violence, common crime, settling of accounts between private individuals by means of violence and "social cleansing" account for a large number of violent deaths, often involving agents of the security forces. In the rural areas, violations of the right to life and physical integrity take place in the context of the activities of the central and northern cartels; of operations carried out by the security forces cooperating with them, sometimes through paramilitary groups; and of the repression, also sometimes through paramilitary groups of armed insurgents and of those carrying out activities to bring about social and economic change in the area. 70. Armed insurgent groups belonging to the FARC and the ELN are said to be present in the two mountain ranges to the east and the west of the Cauca valley. Even though they are said to be less belligerent that in other regions of Colombia, in zones where they are present the civilian population is reported to live under permanent pressure, as the insurgents oblige them to provide money and food. As a consequence, many peasants prefer to leave these areas. 71. The Special Rapporteur received numerous reports of human rights violations during counterinsurgency operations by the security forces in the department of Valle del Cauca. Such operations have repeatedly resulted in massacres of peasants, who were then presented as guerrillas killed in combat. The Special Rapporteur received testimony concerning the extrajudicial execution, after torture, of 13 peasants belonging to 2 families at Ríofrío by members of the military and the local police. 26/ Some of the victims had reportedly been active in the social civic movement of the municipality. On the day of the events, the military had announced that 13 guerrillas had been killed during an armed confrontation. Despite an investigation carried out by the Procuradoría General de la Nación which established the participation of members of the Palacé Battalion of the Colombian Army in the extrajudicial execution of civilians, nobody is said to have been arrested as yet. The case is reportedly in the preliminary investigation stage before the military judiciary. The surviving members of the victims’ families were forced to leave the heavily militarized area out of fear for their lives. 72. The military authorities whom the Special Rapporteur met in Cali stated that the armed insurgents were cooperating with drug traffickers in the department, thus obtaining important financial resources. However, several other sources informed him that close links existed between the military operating in the area and drug traffickers, as well as large landowners in the central and northern parts of the valley - areas suffering from abandon on the part of the departmental authorities in which the enormous social differences