By Sumayya
BOGOTA, Colombia — A flying robot bomb attack on an army camp in northern Colombia killed three soldiers and hurt at least eight others, Colombia’s military stated in a public announcement Saturday.
State leaders have not shared who ran the strike in Santa Rosa del Sur, a tiny town located on the lower hills of the San Lucas mountain chain. The zone around Santa Rosa holds a lot of gold mines and has spent a long time being fought over by the Gulf Clan, the National Liberation Army, and smaller bands led by past members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Video clips shared on social media apps displayed clouds of smoke rising from the camp after three blasts, and soldiers looking for safety inside shelters built from sandbags.
“Those who were behind this attack … will have nowhere to hide,” President Abelardo de la Espriella expressed in a message on X Saturday. “Every attack against our soldiers strengthens our resolve to defend Colombia [1].”
Fighting and violence have grown much heavier in several countryside zones of Colombia since de la Espriella took over his job in August.
The conservative chief canceled peace discussions with the nation’s leftover rebel groups and has used a more aggressive method. This path includes running a higher number of military airstrikes, placing troops inside some cities, and building combined military groups to protect valuable strategic properties, including a fuel pipe that stretches from the Caribbean coast straight to central Colombia.
A few drug cartels and rebel bands have answered by increasing their strikes on Colombia’s military forces. Last week, an army camp in the Tolima area was hit with missiles constructed out of gas tanks, in a strike that killed four civilians. In the border city named Cucuta, police workers have been hit multiple times with bombs set off from a distance.
Before de la Espriella’s time in power started in August, Colombia’s government had been holding multiple peace talks alongside rebel groups, but with very little success. De la Espriella’s government has argued that drug gangs and rebel groups used the temporary ceasefires given to them by the state to strengthen their control over countryside zones, where they force local businesses to pay taxes and make money from the illegal drug trade.
A peace agreement back in 2016 between Colombia’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which is known as the FARC, led to more than 14,000 fighters giving up their weapons and allowed the past rebels to set up an official political party.
But in recent years, smaller bands have been battling over the lands left behind by the FARC fighters.
According to ACLED, an organization that watches wars and conflicts across the globe, government forces and outlawed armed groups ran 34 attacks using bombs or explosives inside Colombia during the four-week length of time that came to an end on October 16—which stands as a 9 percent jump compared to last year’s four-week average.
