The school year had barely begun when gunfire forced children in rural northern Colombia to cower under their desks in fear and silence.

On the same day students were returning to classrooms after the Christmas and New Year holidays, fighting between illegal armed groups erupted near Briceño, in the northeast of Antioquia. By nightfall, schools were shut, a rural health post had closed, and families were sheltering under their beds as rifle fire echoed through nearby hills.

Local authorities say at least 28 rural school sites have been forced to close, cutting off education for some 375 children who now remain at home under a temporary non-attendance model. In several villages, students had already arrived at their classrooms when the clashes began, leaving teachers scrambling to keep children indoors and away from windows as shots rang out nearby.

“For these children, school should be a place of safety,” said Mayor Noé de Jesús Espinosa. “Instead, it has become another place of fear.”

Fighting between Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan) and the 36th Front of FARC dissidents has now drawn-in the state’s security forces. The violence has also shut down the health center in the village of El Roblal, leaving residents without medical care at a time when movement between villages has become too dangerous.

Across at least ten rural communities, daily life has ground to a halt. Public transport and cargo services have been suspended, cutting off supplies of food and medicine. Roughly 500 people are now confined to their homes, many lying on the floor or hiding beneath their beds to protect themselves from bullets and explosive shockwaves.

“In some houses, entire families are sleeping under their beds,” Espinosa said. “They don’t know when the shooting will start again.”

Fear has already driven at least 23 families to flee their homes. Carrying only what they could gather in minutes, they arrived in Briceño’s town center seeking refuge with relatives and friends. Municipal officials are now coordinating emergency aid, while warning that more displacement is likely if the fighting continues.

The violence is rooted in a territorial dispute over the Cauca River canyon, a strategic corridor connecting Antioquia’s Bajo Cauca region with the west of the department. Military intelligence and local sources say the escalation follows an order by alias “Gonzalito,” identified as a senior commander of the Clan del Golfo, to eliminate alias “Primo Gay,” leader of the dissident 36th Front, and seize control of the area.

For residents, however, the strategic calculations of armed groups mean little. What they feel is the constant fear — the uncertainty of whether children can return to school, whether the sick can reach a clinic, and whether families will be forced to flee again.

Army units from the Fourth Brigade are advancing cautiously toward villages such as El Roblal, slowed by the presence of improvised explosive devices and suspected minefields planted along rural paths. The risk has made it difficult for troops — and humanitarian assistance — to reach many isolated communities.

Antioquia Governor Andrés Julián Rendón has urged the national government to maintain a permanent military presence in the area, warning against further troop withdrawals.

“Peasant communities in Antioquia’s most remote regions deserve to live without fear,” Rendón said, recalling that promises made last year to keep troops in Briceño were later reversed.

The trauma is not new. In October, more than 2,000 people — roughly a quarter of Briceño’s population — were forced to flee 18 rural villages after threats from armed groups. Many slept for days in the town’s main square and urban school, unsure if they would ever return home.

As indiscriminate violence once again targets the country’s most vulnerable and forces families to lock themselves inside their homes, residents fear the humanitarian crisis will deepen across Antioquia, just months before Colombians are due to cast their votes in the May 31 presidential election.

The Puracé volcano in southwest Colombia has registered a noticeable uptick in seismic and gas-emission activity over the last 24-hours, prompting authorities to maintain heightened monitoring of one of the country’s most active volcanic systems.

The Colombian Geological Service, known as the SGC, said the latest measurements indicate an increase in seismic signals associated with the movement of fluids beneath the crater. Those signals — including continuous volcanic tremor and distinct long-period events — are typically generated as gases, hot water or small amounts of magma shift through fractures inside the volcanic edifice.

The changes have been visible at the surface. According to a bulletin released by the agency, the volcano has produced columns of gas reaching up to 1.6 kilometers, drifting mostly toward the southwest, sometimes carrying small quantities of ash. While limited in scope, those ash emissions qualify technically as minor eruptions.

Cristian Santacoloma, a volcanologist at the Popayán Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, said the most significant variations occurred on Tuesday, November 25. “We have seen an increase in the constant flow of gases to the surface,” he said, noting that the greyish plume observed during the morning hours contained particulate material consistent with ash. The tremor signals, he added, point to “sustained mobility of fluids within the volcano.”

The Puracé’s summit reaches 4,650 meters (15,256 feet) and sits at the northern end of the Los Coconucos volcanic chain, a line of 15 eruptive centers aligned across the highland terrain of the department of Cauca. Its structure includes two concentric craters and an active fumarolic field on the northern flank known as the Fumarola Lateral. Much of its surface is stained yellow and white from chemical deposits carried by persistent gas discharges.

The region surrounding Puracé is shaped by a long geological history: the volcano rests on an older formation known as Pre-Puracé, which itself developed along the rim of the ancient Chagartón caldera. Its eruptive products include layers of pyroclastic material and andesitic lava flows — evidence of repeated cycles of explosive and effusive activity.

The volcano remains under a Yellow Alert, a mid-tier warning that indicates changes in activity but no immediate threat to surrounding communities. In this state, specialists say, Puracé may produce sporadic ash emissions, small explosions inside the crater, localized sulfur precipitation and, under certain conditions, minor lahars.

The SGC has maintained continuous monitoring of the volcano since 1986. In recent years, its surveillance network has expanded to 32 stations equipped with 65 sensors measuring seismicity, ground deformation, gas composition, temperature and other variables that help scientists detect early signs of escalation.

Authorities have urged residents of Popayán, the departmental capital of Cauca, as well as nearby Indigenous and rural communities to follow official updates and respect any restrictions put in place by park administrators or the National Disaster-Risk Agency (UNGRD). While the current activity is not unusual for Puracé, experts say that sustained changes in seismic patterns requires careful attention.