The football players shot dead on border

Ten men from an amateur football team who were kidnapped as they played have been found dead in Venezuela, sky news reports.

The victims were killed "execution-style" almost two weeks after they were abducted from a field close to the border with Colombia.

Armed men dressed in black called out the names of the team's members one by one before taking 12 men, most of them Colombians, away in vehicles.

The bodies of ten of the captives, aged 17 to 38, were discovered at different places across the western state of Tachira.
Venezuela said the killings could be the work of warring factions in Colombia and stepped up security patrols close to the border.

The only known survivor of the kidnapping, 19-year-old Colombian Manuel Cortez, is in hospital after being forced to his knees and shot in the neck.

His brother Orlando Lopez said Mr. Cortez did not know who his kidnappers were.

"They had them tied up for 14 days in the sun," Mr. Lopez said. "They tied them up to some trees, with chains on their necks and with their hands locked up."

He said the kidnappers told the hostages they "didn't have anything to do with it but they were going to kill them because they had seen their faces".

Mr. Cortez is now at a military hospital in Caracas after an alarming visit at the hospital in the border region where he was initially being treated.

A stranger arrived at the first hospital asking to see Cortez and was detained by authorities, Mr. Lopez said.
The fate of the twelfth kidnapped member of the team remains unknown, informs the Sky.news.