BOGOTA – More than 300 peasants from the Caribbean province of Bolivar were driven off their land by the intense drought caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, in the first evacuation for that reason in Colombia, the national ombudsman’s office said Monday. Nearly a hundred families moved to the urban area of the El Carmen municipality after losing their crops for lack of water, the announcement said. “The effects are devastating and aid is not being delivered in anything like the amount needed to compensate for El Niño, and though it seems to be easing off a little, the damage has been done and for the people there it’s a time of hunger,” the delegate ombudsman for agricultural matters, Andres Felipe Garcia, told reporters in Bogota. The people affected, according to the ombudsman’s office, were also victims of the armed conflict between guerrillas and paramilitaries in Bolivar. “We first had to evacuate because of the violence. We got back with no help and now the summer has us evacuating again. Many families are even worse off, because they have nowhere to go, so they can’t evacuate,” Martin Suarez, one of the victims, told the ombudsman’s office. The office said that on Colombia’s Caribbean coast there are more than 426,000 people, 171,300 hectares (423,000 acres) of cropland and slightly more than 98,700 farm animals affected by the drought, which add up to economic losses of more than 138 billion pesos ($41.6 million). The government organization said that while El Niño is particularly damaging to the Caribbean region, traditionally the driest, in the Andes it is also having devastating effects. Drought-related agricultural losses in Colombia’s Andean region are estimated at 528 billion pesos ($160 million), according to the ombudsman’s office.