Colombia –
A first bombardment was carried out against the Clan del Golfo
President Gustavo Petro authorized a first bombing last week against the Clan del Golfo, the main drug trafficking cartel in Colombia.
Published: 09.12.2024, 11:33 p.m.
Gustavo Petro has spoken out in favor of opening negotiations that could lead to the disarmament of the Clan del Golfo, but the approaches made to its new leaders have so far failed.
AFP
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Four members of the Clan del Golfo, the main drug trafficking cartel in Colombia, were killed last week during the first bombing ordered by Colombian President Gustavo Petro against this criminal organization, we learned from an official source on Monday.
“The operation of the national army in the village of Bejuquillo (…), in the department of Antioquia left four members of the cartel dead and eight rifles were seized,” President Petro said on X.
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This is the first bombing by the armed forces against this powerful cocaine trafficking organization under the government of Gustavo Petro, elected in the summer of 2022 as the first left-wing president in the country’s history.
“The Clan tried with political and economic alliances to bring together armed units of greater capacity” in this region, and the army’s operations “seriously affected their intention,” Gustavo Petro said.
Death of four soldiers
During more than half a century of armed conflict in Colombia, aerial bombardments were used by different governments to fight against far-left guerrillas, such as the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla now demobilized following a historic peace agreement concluded in 2016.
The department of Antioquia, in northwestern Colombia, is one of the main strongholds of the Clan del Golfo. The Clan has routes in this region that it uses for drug trafficking, but also controls illegal gold mines and exploits illegal immigration and human trafficking to diversify its income.
During the same operation, four soldiers accidentally lost their lives on Thursday while abseiling from a helicopter, according to President Petro, deaths already announced by the Colombian army. The leader of the Clan del Golfo, alias Otoniel, was captured in October 2022 and then extradited to the United States.
Short truce in 2023
Gustavo Petro spoke out in favor of opening negotiations that could lead to the disarmament of this criminal organization, heir to the far-right paramilitary squadrons at the height of the armed conflict in the 1990s/2000s, but the approaches undertaken with its new leaders have so far failed.
In early 2023, the left-wing leader declared a unilateral ceasefire with the cartel, a truce which was broken three months later. In mid-November, the government appointed around twenty of the most feared former paramilitary leaders to act as “mediators” and help advance this beginning of the peace process.
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