Colombia suspends peace talks with ELN rebel group after a deadly attack on the military

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia on Wednesday suspended peace talks with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, after blaming the rebel group for an attack that killed two soldiers and injured more than 20.

“Today the dialogue process is suspended,” said the government’s peace delegation in a statement. “Its viability is severely damaged, and its continuity can only be recovered with an unequivocal manifestation of the ELN’s will for peace.”

This is the deepest crisis of the peace negotiations with the ELN since November 2022 and after President Gustavo Petro took power as the first leftist president launching talks with that and other armed groups under a policy known as total peace.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, ended a cease-fire with the Colombian government in August, but was still involved in peace talks aimed at ending more than five decades of conflict.

The army said Tuesday that the group fired homemade rockets from a cargo truck that had been parked near a base in Puerto Jordan, a small town in Arauca province.

The rebel group has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

The ELN was founded in the 1960s by union leaders and university students inspired by the Cuban Revolution. The group has an estimated 6,000 fighters in Colombia and Venezuela and finances itself through drug trafficking and illegal gold mines.

Recently the ELN has been spreading into rural areas abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the large rebel group that made a peace deal with Colombia’s government in 2016.

The attack on Tuesday left two soldiers killed and 26 wounded, according to the latest report from Defense Minister Iván Velásquez.

Most of the wounded were airlifted to a military hospital in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, where Petro visited them on Wednesday. According to the hospital’s medical report, 13 remain hospitalized in “stable condition,” most with soft tissue injuries, while five are in the intensive care unit.

Authorities announced on Wednesday a reward of up to $23,700 for information leading to the capture of those responsible for the attack. They also confirmed a reward of up to $948,000 for the main leaders of the ELN.

Petro compared the attack in Arauca to another carried out by the ELN in 2019 against a police school in Bogotá that killed 22 people died and dozens injured. That assault led also to the suspension of the peace talks of the rebel group with the government of Iván Duque, president from 2018 to 2022.

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