Havana, May 27 (EFE).– The delegation representing the FARC rebels in peace talks here with the Colombian government said Wednesday that one of the group’s negotiators was killed in a May 21 airstrike by government forces in southwest Colombia.

“Amid the mourning that overwhelms us, we announce to the country and the world that comrade Jairo Martinez, a member of the FARC’s Peace Delegation in Havana, who was on a peace-teaching mission … is among the murdered guerrillas,” said the negotiating team in a statement released in the Cuban capital.

Colombian officials say that 26 people died in the bombardment, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, insists that 27 were killed.

The FARC also confirmed that a member of its high command, Roman Ruiz, “was murdered” in another army operation on May 25.

Jairo Martinez joined the FARC peace negotiation team in Cuba in February 2014.

As sources with the FARC peace delegation told Efe on Wednesday, Martinez was in Havana for eight months and then was sent to Colombia on a “peace-teaching mission.”

The FARC on Wednesday said that the military bombardment on May 21 was carried out “with an excessive use of force.”

The guerrillas are asking that the bodies collected after those attacks be inspected by national and international forensic experts under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross so that Colombians may have access to “a trustworthy report regarding the circumstances of their deaths.”

In its Wednesday statement, the FARC said that “the fate of Colombia cannot be that of war” and they urged “reestablishing trust and resuming the efforts” of the parties in the peace process to “make concrete the measures to deescalate the conflict that we have been analyzing.”

“We have to emerge from this turbulence to deliver to the Colombian people a bright horizon that allows us to traverse, free of (encumbrances), the road to a final accord,” said negotiator Pastor Alape, who reiterated that “the important advances achieved at the peace table in Havana (must not be) thrown overboard.”

The FARC issued its statement before a new day of dialogue with the Colombian government, the 37th session of the peace process launched in late 2012. EFE