At least 39 people have been killed in violence by a guerrilla group near the Colombia-Venezuela border, Colombian officials said Friday.
The violence has prompted President Gustavo Petro to suspend peace talks with the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN).
“The dialogue process with this group is suspended, the ELN has no desire for peace,” Petro wrote on Friday. The group called what they did a “war crime.”
What do we know about violence?
ELN fighters attacked dissident members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in several villages and farms in the Catatumbo region in the northern Department of Catalonia.
More than 30 people were killed and more than 20 were injured, according to William Villamizar, governor of Norte de Santander.
The Colombian government said at least five of those killed were former FARC rebels who accepted the 2016 peace deal.
In another incident, nine people were killed in violence between ELN fighters and the Clan del Golfo, the country’s main criminal gang, in the nearby Bolivar department.
peace talks stalled
The peace process between the Colombian government and the ELN, which resumed in 2022, has been plagued with setbacks.
In September last year, the government suspended talks after an attack on a military base that killed two soldiers and injured more than two dozen.
The violence is a challenge to Colombia’s first leftist President Petro and his core security policy of “total peace.”
His strategy focuses on removing the ELN from its role in the country’s six-decade-long internal armed conflict.
ESS/SMS (Reuters, AFP, EFE)
