The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, condemned this Tuesday the attack by the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas against a military base in Puerto Jordán, in the department of Arauca (east), which left two soldiers dead and 27 wounded, and stated that “it is an action that closes a peace process with blood.”
“The consequences of actions and the flow of history today bring us a dramatic event that has been repeated in recent years, a dump truck loaded with explosives that injured 27 young people and killed two, according to the information I have, placed by the ELN with whom we were talking about peace.“Petro said upon the inauguration of Judge Claudia Regina Expósito as a member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary.
The president compared the attack to the attack on the Colombian Police Cadet School in Bogotá, which in January 2019 left 20 dead and 68 injured, including an Ecuadorian cadet, and which put an end to the dialogue that the Government was maintaining at that time with that guerrilla group.
“And obviously, as happened that time in another place nearby, at the Police School, many police officers and lieutenants who were studying there died, so it is practically an action that closes a peace process with blood.“, he added.
Lost opportunity
ELN.
THE TIME file
The Colombian Government and the ELN began a new peace negotiation in Caracas in November 2022, which, however, It stalled at the beginning of this year due to the guerrillas’ demands that the Executive remove them from the list of terrorist groups and abandon regional dialogues such as the one held in the department of Nariño (southwest) with Comuneros del Sur, supposedly a split-off from the ELN.
During negotiations in Caracas, Havana and Mexico City, The parties agreed to a one-year bilateral ceasefire, the longest ever agreed with the guerrilla group, which ended on August 3, After which the ELN resumed its attacks against public forces and infrastructure in different parts of the country, especially in Arauca, where it is particularly strong.
“And it is like an eternal becoming, silencing a part of the people and continuing in wars, killing each other again and again as if that were our history.“, the president lamented.
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The Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristo, also expressed himself along these lines: “A negotiation table cannot continue amidst the blood of our wounded soldiers, of the civilian population. The ELN did not understand the message (…) it has lost a historic opportunity to negotiate peace; it insists on violence, it insists on harming Colombians.” “The ELN has definitely been left behind by the train of history,” Cristo concluded.
The mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, considered that “the decision of the National Government to end the peace process is the correct one.”
“Colombia cannot negotiate with those who have not shown any desire for peace.“, Galán said on his X account, in which he lamented “the attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and left 27 others injured in Jordán, Arauca.”
The attack
Attack in Arauca
THE TIME file
The attack on Tuesday took place at the Puerto Jordán military base in Arauca (east), which “was attacked with improvised explosive devices launched from a dump truck.”
According to figures provided by the Ministry of Defence, 27 soldiers were injured, “of whom 20 have shrapnel” and seven are “seriously injured”.
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Last Sunday two soldiers died in a rural area of Tame (Arauca) in an attack attributed to the ELN who shot them while they were at a checkpoint.
This terrorist escalation also includes attacks on the Caño Limón-Coveñas and Bicentenario oil pipelines, two of the most important in the country.
The 770-kilometer-long Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline transports oil from wells in Arauca to Coveñas, a Colombian port on the Caribbean Sea.
EFE
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