Colombia's Nobel-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez is in a "good mood" as he recovers from a lung infection in a Mexico City hospital, sources close to the 87-year-old writer said Friday.

Garcia Marquez's son said his family decided to take him to the hospital as a precaution on Monday and health officials said he was taking antibiotics for lung and urinary tract infections.

Two police officers were killed early Friday in a FARC attack in western Colombia, authorities said, amid ongoing peace talks between the rebel group and government.

The attack occurred in the town of Jambalo while the officers were patrolling the area.

Colombia's army said it killed six FARC rebels and captured eight on Tuesday in a fierce and prolonged clash that came against the backdrop of ongoing peace talks.

The incident took place in Tumaco, southern Colombia, in Narino department, the army reported.

A powerful 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit northern Chile's Pacific coast Tuesday, killing at least six people as tsunami waves of more than two meters lashed the shore.

The quake sent panicked residents pouring into the streets, with more than 900,000 people along Chile's coast heeding government orders to evacuate their homes and seek higher ground.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday said government troops killed a finance officer with the FARC and vowed to press ahead with offensives against the guerrilla group despite peace talks.

John Hernandez, alias "Fabian," who was head of finance for Front 17 of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was killed by government soldiers in a hamlet in the south of the country, Santos said.

Colombia has captured an alleged drug money launderer linked to one of the country's top former kingpins, the army said Saturday.

Jose Lenoir Aguilar, accused by U.S. officials of being a front-man for detained drug lord Daniel "El Loco" Barrera, was arrested northwest of the capital Bogota.

Following weeks of violent protests, Venezuela's leftist government on Thursday agreed to having an outside "witness" to ease stalled talks with its political opposition.

The deal, brokered by a group of South American foreign ministers, is aimed at ending the impasse between the government of President Nicolas Maduro and his political opponents, some of whom have been jailed for allegedly inciting violence.

Colombia confirmed Thursday that the United States had asked it to take in inmates from the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects.

It did so after news reports in Uruguay said that that country, Brazil and Colombia had been approached by the Americans.

One policeman was killed and eight others, police and civilians, were wounded in an explosion in southwestern Colombia suspected to have been carried out by leftist rebels.

As police returned from responding to a fight Sunday night in the town of Guapi, they were attacked in the town's outskirts with an explosive device, sources confirmed Monday.

Four people were killed and 16 wounded Saturday in a bomb attack on a newly opened Colombian drug-rehab center which police believe was the work of organized crime.

Initial reports said the attack involved "around a kilo of explosives" being carried unwittingly in a bag into the center by one of its residents, according to General Jose Angel Mendoza, police commander of Medellin, Colombia's second city.