(Bogotá) At least six Colombian soldiers were killed Tuesday by dissidents of the Marxist guerrillas of the FARC, in the south-west of Colombia, where the military operations will continue against these groups which refuse the offer of peace of the government , warned President Petro.
This is the worst attack since several factions of these dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia responded positively this fall to an offer to negotiate from the new power of the left.
These armed groups reject the agreement signed in 2016 with the Marxist guerrillas, which have since laid down their arms.
The six soldiers killed on Tuesday were attacked around three in the morning in a rural area of Buenos Aires (southwest), in the department of Cauca, the army said in a statement.
“Several soldiers lost their lives […] All young men aged 18 to 20,” said President Gustavo Petro after an extraordinary security council meeting in Bogota.
They were the target of “a premeditated and planned sting operation by the ‘Jaime Martinez’ column”, one of the main factions of the FARC dissident, according to Mr. Petro.
Military operations “will not cease until there is a real will to negotiate”, warned the Head of State, referring to an upcoming “reaction” from the security forces, who “will therefore not leave the Cauca region”.
“The possibility of dialogue today is not limited to the cessation of military operations,” he insisted.
“Action and reaction measures”
Colombia has suffered more than half a century of armed conflict between the state and various groups of left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
Gustavo Petro, a historic opponent who became the country’s first left-wing leader in August, has pledged to take a less belligerent approach to ending this violence.
He intends to negotiate with all the armed groups, including criminals, within the framework of an ambitious project of “total peace”.
A draft law to this effect is under consideration in parliament, pending its adoption.
A dozen armed groups are “in a situation of bilateral ceasefire”, according to the government, while there are nearly 90 political and/or criminal groups operating today in Colombia, totaling around 10,000 members, according to the NGO Indepaz.
To date, “there is only one concrete process with the National Liberation Army (ELN, Guevarist),” Petro said on Tuesday.
Another process of negotiations “will open tomorrow, with different groups […]closely linked to drug trafficking in the popular neighborhoods of Buenaventura” (west), he detailed.
These discussions, with two powerful rival gangs, the “Shottas” and the “Espartanos”, who have put the major port on the Pacific coast under control, are “an unprecedented new experience”, according to Mr. Petro.
The “Security Council, in addition to regretting the death of these young men, has taken measures of reaction, of action, which will be triggered in Putumayo (south-west), in the Cauca region and in the Arauca (northeast), where there are also growing conflicts,” he said.
In the Cauca in particular, the area of Naya, where the army is currently deployed and suffered the attack on Tuesday, in the foothills of the Western Andes, the situation “obviously has to do with drug trafficking routes […] to reach the Pacific Ocean,” said President Petro.
According to a government report on Monday, since Gustavo Petro came to power, the army has carried out 108 operations, captured 4,308 suspects and neutralized 1,200 cocaine production laboratories, while cocaine seizures by the navy are increasing by 30 %.
“We do not intend to cede an inch of national territory to crime, to drug trafficking, to those who are outside the law and who are not engaged in any of the processes put in place to move towards total peace. “, assured Monday the Minister of the Interior, Alfonso Prada.