Venezuela said on Sunday at least 10 members of an amateur Colombian soccer team had been found dead after being kidnapped on its side of the border.
The murders added another complication to fractious ties between the two South American neighbors.
Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, stirred things up more by calling the Colombian defense minister a “mental retard.”
Caracas broke off relations and minimized trade earlier this year because of Colombia’s acceptance of US military bases on its soil.
Bogota is one of the main US allies in the region, whereas Chavez is a highly vocal critic of Washington.
The Colombian soccer players, seized on Oct. 11, were found with bullet wounds in various parts of western Tachira state, Venezuelan Vice President Ramon Carrizalez told reporters.
One of the 12 men survived the ordeal, while another was still missing, Venezuelan authorities said.
Kidnappings and armed disputes are rife on both sides of the frontier, where Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary militia and criminal gangs all operate.
Carrizalez said the deaths of the football players, whom local media have said were local tradesmen in Venezuela for a match, were related to Colombia’s internal conflict.
He gave no further details.
Colombia offered to cooperate with Venezuelan authorities in bringing those responsible for the deaths to justice.
“This deplorable act shows that terrorism is international, that it does not respect frontiers,” Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told reporters.
Chavez, during his weekly television show, expressed outrage at comments on Friday by Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva that most illegal flights hauling Colombian drugs to Central America and the US were now leaving from Venezuela.
While recognizing Venezuela has become a significant trafficking route, Chavez’s government is sensitive to repeated charges of not doing enough to tackle the problem.
“He must be a mental retard,” Chavez said of Silva during Sunday’s show broadcast on state TV. “But no, no, he knows what he is doing. He’s following the instructions of the empire, because it’s not Colombians who run Colombia, it’s the Yankee empire.”
Chavez said Venezuela was a victim of US demand and Colombian production of drugs. US military and other assistance had only aggravated the problem in the world’s biggest cocaine producer, he said.
“In Colombia, the drug trade has doubled since the so-called Colombian Plan began because wherever Yankee troops go, so do drug dealers,” Chavez said. “Ask Afghanistan, Vietnam, Colombia.”
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