FARC guerrillas freed Wednesday a Colombian soldier held by the Marxist rebels for two weeks, the defense ministry said, in a move that will inject fresh life into the peace process.

The release of Jesus Rojas came after the Red Cross intervened and is a timely boost to the peace talks between the government and rebels, with both sides vowing to reach a final deal by the end of March to end a five-decade conflict that has killed more than 220,000 people.

Colombia is investigating a Syrian woman with ties to radical Islam, who traveled to Paris ahead of the attacks on a stolen Israeli passport, sources at the state prosecutor's office said Thursday.

Seham Al Salkhadi left ahead of Friday's attacks on a direct flight from Bogota to the French capital's Charles de Gaulle airport, traveling under the name of Ashira Krieger, the sources said.

The peace talks to end five decades of conflict between the Colombian government and FARC rebels mark their third anniversary Thursday, with a deal tantalizingly close but still beyond reach.

Since they opened in Havana on November 19, 2012, the talks have produced partial deals on three out of six agenda items: land reform, political participation for the rebels and fighting the drug trafficking fueling the conflict in the world's largest cocaine-producing country.

Six guerrillas and three drug gang members were killed in separate Colombian army operations, the defense ministry said Thursday.

The guerrillas were from the National Liberation Army (ELN), killed in an operation in the northeastern area of Bolivar.

With a key stumbling block in Colombia's peace talks now resolved, negotiators pledged Thursday to speed up the process and meet a six-month deadline for ending Latin America's last guerrilla conflict.

The timeframe was announced Wednesday by President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the leftist FARC rebel army, Timoleon Jimenez.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the country's largest rebel group announced on Wednesday an important breakthrough in peace talks that sets the stage to end Latin America's longest-running armed conflict.

In a joint statement from Cuba, Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said they have overcome the last significant obstacle to a peace deal by settling on a formula to punish belligerents for human rights abuses committed during a half century of bloody, drug-fueled fighting.

Colombia's president and the head of the FARC rebel group were due to meet in Cuba on Wednesday in a push to seal a peace accord and end a half-century guerrilla war.

After nearly three years of stop-and-start peace talks in Havana between the Bogota government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), President Juan Manuel Santos announced the surprise trip on Twitter, saying: "Peace is near."

A Venezuelan military plane crashed on the border with Colombia during an operation to intercept an "illicit aircraft," with the fate of the two pilots unknown, the government said Friday.

The two countries have been locked in a border conflict for a month, after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the closure of part of the frontier, saying some of his military were attacked during an anti-smuggling operation by Colombian paramilitaries.

Two people died when a plane carrying crew members from a film starring Tom Cruise crashed in Colombia, aviation authorities and Universal Pictures said.

The crew had just wrapped up production on the upcoming Doug Liman film "Mena," when it went down on Friday while returning to Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport in Medellin.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro late Monday said he had ordered more of his country's vast border with Colombia closed amid a diplomatic crisis over deportations and smuggling.

"I have decided to close the border crossing at Paraguachon, Zulia state," Maduro said in a televised address. He said he would send an additional 3,000 troops to the area.