At least eight policemen have been killed in a bomb attack in western Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has said, the deadliest attack on security forces since he took office promising to end the country’s nearly 60-year conflict.
Police sources said the officers were killed on Friday when the vehicle they were traveling in was hit by explosives.
“I strongly reject the explosive attack in San Luis, Huila where eight policemen died. Solidarity with their families,” Petro tweeted, citing a death toll of eight that was later revised.
“These acts are a clear sabotage of total peace. I have asked the authorities to go to the area to investigate,” he said.
Petro, a former member of the M-19 rebel movement, has vowed to seek “total peace” by resuming talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels as he implements a 2016 peace deal for former Armed Forces fighters. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who reject it and negotiate the surrender of the crime gangs in exchange for reduced sentences.
His predecessor, conservative Ivan Duque, had broken off peace talks with the ELN after a 2019 car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogota that left 22 dead.
Petro did not name the suspected perpetrators of Friday’s attack, but so-called dissidents from the now-demobilized FARC rebel movement are known to operate in the area, according to security sources.
Several well-known dissident commanders have been killed recently, many of them in fighting across the border in Venezuela.
Colombia’s conflict between the government, left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and drug-trafficking gangs killed at least 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018 alone.
