Experts begin to exhume mass grave at Colombian landfill

MEDELLIN, Colombia, July 28 (UPI) -- Forensics experts have begun to exhume the bodies of up to 300 people believed to be buried in a landfill in Medellin, Colombia.

Several people in the northern Colombian city have been missing since 2002, when the military conducted an anti-guerrilla operation in the area.

Authorities plan to unearth an estimated 20,000 tons of dirt in an effort to find between 90 and 300 people believed to be buried at the site, according to the BBC.. The excavation began Tuesday after a religious ceremony.

Locals have mainly blamed the disappearances on criminal gangs and right-wing paramilitaries who occupied the area after the rebels fled.

Colombia's second-largest city, Medellin was once home to the cartel ran by late drug lord Pablo Escobar, and left-wing rebel groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and The 19th of April Movement, or M-19, are known to have operated in the area.

The exhumation comes two days after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the military to stop conducting airstrikes against FARC rebels as part of an earlier pledge to roll back military operations against the leftist group. On July 9, FARC officials announced a unilateral cease-fire in the hopes of ending five decades of conflict.

Still, fighting between rebels and the military persists. In June, ELN rebels reportedly destroyed a Colombian military helicopter, and Colombian authorities last month said they killed a high-level ELN leader during an operation in the country's northwest. On July 18 -- one day before the FARC's announcement of a cease-fire -- Colombia's National Police said it had arrested 15 people, including suspected members of the ELN, in connection with bombing attacks in Bogota last year.

Colombia's civil war has gone on since 1964 and claimed the lives of up to 200,000 people.

The FARC, being the largest rebel group in the country, has since 2012 been involved in talks with the Colombian government in Havana, Cuba, in order to negotiate an end to the conflict.