Four members of a 100-strong joint task force (FTC) of police and military personnel were killed on 19 October while attempting to carry out coca eradication in Apolo in the north-western province of Franz Tamayo in the department of La Paz. These are the first reported fatalities associated with coca eradication since President Evo Morales took office in 2005. Morales claimed that the FTC had been ambushed. He argued that the attack was too well-planned and the assailants too well-armed to have been “brother coca growers” and laid the blame squarely on foreign drug-traffickers from Peru, which looks close on the map but is not nearly so close on the ground. End of preview - This article contains approximately 669 words.
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