Authorities ask for help identifying two people they say were taken by same faction of Farc that kidnapped three journalists last week

Ecuadorian authorities say a dissident Colombian rebel group has kidnapped two people in the same conflictive border area where three press workers taken hostage by the group were killed last week.

The interior minister, César Navas, on Tuesday showed a proof of life video in which a man and woman tied at their necks with rope beg the president, Lenín Moreno, to meet their captors’ demands so that they don’t suffer the same fate as the journalists.

“Mr President, please help us, give us a hand, so the same thing doesn’t happen to us as it did the journalists,” the man said in the video flanked by two camouflaged men with assault weapons and their backs facing the camera. “We have kids, and family … We have nothing to do with this war.”

Navas appealed to his compatriots to help identify the two captives, who identify themselves as Ecuadorians in the video.

Ecuadorian journalists kidnapped by rebels have been killed, president says Read more

He said they were held by the same faction of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) that the government says killed the employees of El Comercio newspaper three weeks after taking them hostage.

Ecuadorian security forces backed by their Colombian counterparts have been carrying out an unprecedented manhunt for the group’s leader, Walter Arizala, better known by his alias Guacho, and have offered more than $230,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

The holdout faction of the Farc has been terrorizing residents along the border area, carrying out several attacks on Ecuadorian military targets in retaliation for Moreno’s decision to combat drug gangs that have made the long-neglected area a major transit zone for Colombian-produced cocaine making its way by boat up the Pacific Ocean coastline to Central America and then by land to the US. Four soldiers have been killed in the attacks, and dozens more injured.

In a proof of life video of the journalists sent by the Oliver Sinisterra Front, the captors demand Ecuador release several of its combatants and end all anti-narcotics cooperation with Colombia. It is not clear if those are the same demands the new captives referred to in the newest video.

“These are cowards,” said Navas. “They protect themselves with human shields to blackmail the Ecuadorian people and steal our peace.”