[3] The siege began on the mid-day of February 27, 1980, when seventeen guerrillas dressed in the warm-up clothes of joggers stormed the embassy compound, located in a suburb of Bogotá.

[1] Within 30 minutes of learning that the Dominican Embassy had been seized, a Colombian task force was established on the State Department's 7th floor.

[5] The hostages included the Papal nuncio to Colombia, Angelo Acerbi, as well as the ambassadors from fourteen countries: Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Israel, Mexico, Switzerland, the United States (Diego C. Asencio), Uruguay, and Venezuela.

[7] On March 8, the guerrillas reduced their demands to free 311 prisoners to seventy and lowered the amount of money requested to US$10 million.

Early on March 17, the Uruguayan ambassador, Fernando Gomez Fyns, escaped from the embassy by jumping from a window and running to troops surrounding the compound.

The sixteen guerrillas left the embassy with the remaining twelve diplomatic hostages under the supervision of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States, and boarded a Cubana Airlines flight to Cuba.

[9] The M-19's second in command, a guerrilla named Carmenza Cardona Londoño, known by her nom de guerre 'La Chiqui', returned to Colombia after spending some time in Havana, and died in combat with the Colombian Army a few years later.