Three minors were killed in a Colombian bombing raid on cocaine-trafficking guerrillas in the Amazon last week, forensic experts said.
The airstrike was the deadliest against Colombia's myriad armed groups since right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella came to power earlier this month vowing to flush out the rebels with US military support.
Ten people were killed in total in the August 27 strike, three of them minors, the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said in a statement Sunday night.
According to the defense ministry, two of the victims of the bombings in the southern department of Guaviare were 15 years old and another was 16.
Those killed allegedly belonged to a dissident faction of the defunct rebel army FARC that rejected a historic peace agreement between the state and FARC in 2016.
De la Espriella on Monday reported another bombing in the same area against another FARC dissident group led by Colombia's most wanted guerrilla, who goes by the alias Ivan Mordisco.
Eight members of Mordisco's group were killed, according to the president. It is not yet known whether any of them were minors.
Colombia's new leader, a staunch ally of US President Donald Trump who succeeded leftist Trump critic Gustavo Petro, expressed "full support" for the operations against what he called "narco-terrorist" groups.
"The bandits who for decades have recruited minors to turn them into combatants or human shields must pay for these crimes that violate International Humanitarian Law," he wrote on X.
Rights groups warn that children and teens are increasingly being recruited by Colombian armed groups on social media.
Human Rights Watch, in a report last week, said that, in some cases, children were being used as "cannon fodder."
The Ombudsman's Office reported 428 cases of child recruitment by armed groups last year.