Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa withdrew his government’s ambassador in Bogota, Colombia, and ordered troops to the country’s border following a Colombian raid against leftist rebels inside Ecuador.

In a televised address, Correa called a raid by Colombian national police and air force one day earlier a “massacre” that killed civilians.

The strike at dawn Saturday killed two leading figures in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist movement that has fought a guerrilla war against the country’s government for some 40 years. One of the dead was FARC’s second-in-command, Luis Edgar Devia Silva, known as “Raul Reyes.”

The incident has triggered a crisis among the three countries, as Venezuela President Hugo Chavez also ordered 10 battalions of troops to the Colombian border and the closure of Venezuela’s embassy in Bogota.

Chavez pledged to “support Ecuador in any circumstance,” he said on his weekly talk show, “Alo Presidente,” or “Hello, President.” Watch the implications of the raid.

“We don’t want war, but we will not allow the North American empire — which is the master — and its sub-President [Alvaro] Uribe and the Colombian oligarchy to divide, to weaken us. We will not allow it.”

The three countries are neighbors, with Colombia, a U.S. ally, squeezed between Ecuador, to the southwest, and Venezuela, to the east.

The White House said Sunday it was “monitoring the situation.”

“This is an odd reaction by Venezuela to Colombia’s efforts against the FARC, a terrorist organization that continues to hold Colombians, Americans and others hostage,” spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

FARC has justified hostage-taking as a legitimate military tactic in a long-running and complex civil war that also has involved right-wing paramilitaries, government forces and drug traffickers.

(CNN)