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The soldiers were killed in a town in the department of Huila, in the southwest of the country, in an ambush while they were preparing to set up a unified command post and deploy security operations in the area. President Gustavo Petro will travel to the area to “take charge of the situation.”
It is the most serious attack committed in the country since the arrival to the Presidency of Gustavo Petro. The attack against the eight policemen was perpetrated with explosives and rifle bursts while they were being transported in a truck.
The event occurred in the department of Huila, in the southwest of the country. The Colombian president is on his way to visit the area, one of the hardest hit during the internal armed conflict by the extinct FARC guerrilla.
Although the authors of the police attack are not known, official reports assure that Dissidents from the guerrilla group operate in the department and did not accept the Peace Agreement signed in 2016 between the State and the armed group.
The officials were participating in a welfare activity in the Neiva Metropolitan Police command, the capital of the department.
The victims were the mayors Willson Cuéllar Lozada and Luis Alberto Sabi Gutiérrez; patrolmen Duberney Carreño Rodríguez and Jhon Fredy Bautista, and auxiliaries Andrés Mauricio Pascuas, Santiago Gómez Endez, Cristian Ricardo Cubillos and Gustavo Alberto Esquivel Rojas.
According to President Petro, this is a clear sabotage of his “total peace” proposal, which he has mentioned since before his inauguration on August 7.
I strongly reject the attack with explosives that killed 8 police officers in San Luis, Huila. Solidarity with their families. These facts express a clear sabotage of total peace. I have asked the authorities to travel to the territory to take over the investigation.
– Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) September 2, 2022
And it is that since the president assumed power there have been 11 massacres; throughout the month of August 15 and so far this year a total of 73, which has left a balance of 243 victims according to records of the Observatory of Conflicts and Human Rights of Indepaz.
Prior to the announcement that the president would visit the area, troops from the Colombian Army and Police were sent to the site to ensure the entry of the officials of the Prosecutor’s Office, in charge of removing the bodies. The Public Ministry also announced that experts and criminalistics experts will intervene at the scene to investigate the attack.
I reject the treacherous attack committed this afternoon against uniformed @policiacolombia of the substation of San Luis, Neiva. All my solidarity with the families of the 8 murdered servers. The Armed Forces must respond forcefully to this attack on peace.
– Iván Velásquez Gómez (@Ivan_Velasquez_) September 2, 2022
Petro’s ‘total peace’ challenge
With the number of massacres growing since he arrived at the Casa de Nariño, the vestiges of an internal war of more than 50 years and with insurgent groups perpetrating attacks on civilians and police in the rural regions of the country, the first leftist president of Colombia has a huge challenge.
Between the president and left-wing senator Iván Cepeda lies the responsibility of carrying out the idea of ”total peace” in the South American country.
“Where are those problems? Basically, in Colombia there has been an attempt to make peace in pieces, in a fragmented way. So today we can start a dialogue with such a group, a peace agreement is made, then the agreement is regularly breached, or is breached in a high percentage. Dissidents then arise, the State does not enter the territories, so we return to dissidences of dissidents, and we already have organizations like the so-called Clan del Golfo, which is a sum of dissidents. We cannot continue down that path,” Cepeda said in an interview for the newspaper ‘El País’.
And it is precisely the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia or ‘Clan del Gofo’, as one of the largest drug trafficking groups in Colombia is known locally, who has been attributed the recent ‘pistol plan’, an operation in the that groups outside the law systematically assassinate members of the Public Force and to whom it has been attributed in this way because it is not the first time it has happened in that country.
Although the authorities also point out that members of the FARC dissidents and the ELN guerrilla may be involved in the ‘pistol plan’, the truth is that more than 40 soldiers have been killed so far in 2022.
With EFE and local media
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