A pair of teenage girls were shot dead after unwittingly straying into an area controlled by a brutal Colombian drugs gang that forced everyone to carry a cartel ID card.

University students Maria Paula Dulce Alarcon, 19, and Lina Marcela Rodriguez Ordonez, 18, were executed soon after arriving in Jamundí in Valle del Cauca department.

The lawless region is under the control of a ruthless rogue branch of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), now controlled by ultra-violent leader Ivan Mordisco.

Leaders fund the cartel, known as the Jaime Martinez Mobile Column, with drug trafficking, kidnapping, illegal mining and extortion.

Under their merciless code, anyone who wants to move freely around the area has to apply for a cartel ‘mobility card’, which is worn like a badge.

And nobody is allowed on the streets after 9 pm without a special permit issued by local cartel commanders.

The teenage girls had just arrived in the town and were unaware of the rules and permits, with one of them carrying a plane ticket showing they had only just arrived in the area.

A spokesman for the city mayor’s office confirmed to local media that they were found dead in a neighbourhood where column gunmen enforce the permit rules.

The City Hall statement added: “The Mayor’s Office of Jamundi reiterates its rejection of acts of violence in the territory and makes an urgent call to the National Government to focus its attention on Jamundi a municipality that cries out for peace and strives to be a territory of peace.”

The region has been plagued with drug violence for decades, but the killings increased after 2018 when the column took over cocaine and marijuana production.

Mexican cartels have begun invading in raids across the border, triggering bloody territory wars.

In 2006, ten anti-narcotics police and one civilian were massacred by the elite army unit known as the High Mountain Battalion in an ambush.

The squad later claimed they had mistaken the officers for cartel members.

National Police and the Attorney General’s Office have deployed a team of investigators to track down the girls’ killers.