{"id":21644,"date":"2026-04-28T11:03:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/21644\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:03:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:03:21","slug":"attacks-shock-colombia-just-weeks-before-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/21644\/","title":{"rendered":"Attacks shock Colombia just weeks before presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 A spate of attacks against civilians and military bases<\/a> in Colombia\u2019s southwestern region has raised security concerns as the country heads to a May presidential election in which crime is expected to be one of the top voter concerns.<\/p>\n

Rebel groups have staged 26 attacks with explosives and drones since Friday, including a deadly blast Saturday on a highway between the cities of Cali and Popayan, according to Colombia\u2019s defense ministry. The death toll in that explosion rose to 21 people on Monday.<\/p>\n

Violence in the region is nothing new. Illegal groups have sought to control the area for decades, deeming it strategic for illicit activities, such as illegal mining<\/a> and drug trafficking, including the cultivation of coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine.<\/p>\n

Authorities blamed a group known as the FARC-EMC<\/a> for the lethal explosion, near a tunnel on the Pan-American Highway. The group is led by Nestor Vera \u2014 commonly known as Iv\u00e1n Mordisco \u2014 a former member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia<\/a>, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, who refused to join a 2016 peace deal with the nation\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

Sergio Guzm\u00e1n, a political risk analyst in Colombia\u2019s capital, Bogota, said that Mordisco\u2019s group could be trying to demonstrate that it has the capabilities to do serious damage, and is seeking to \u201cestablish its credibility\u201d with Colombia\u2019s next government as it positions itself for future negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what they are doing is establishing leverage towards the future,\u201d Guzm\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n

Under President Gustavo Petro<\/a>, a former member of a guerrilla group, the Colombian government has attempted to stage peace talks with the nation\u2019s remaining rebel groups through a strategy known as ” total peace<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has offered ceasefires to various groups in an effort to promote peace negotiations, but analysts say the strategy has failed, because these groups used the ceasefires to regroup, rearm and strengthen their grip over communities.<\/p>\n

Groups like the FARC-EMC have been known to tax residents in areas under their control, and also forcibly recruit youth into their ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s peace policy has been na\u00efve,\u201d said Javier Garay, a political science professor at Colombia\u2019s Externado University. \u201cThey thought that if they had a condescending attitude towards these groups they would receive a positive response.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late 2023, the FARC-EMC entered peace talks with the Colombian government. But a faction led by Mordisco abandoned the talks in April 2024, and has been fighting the Colombian government<\/a> since then.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that Mordisco\u2019s group is particularly strong in the provinces of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, where it\u2019s fighting for control of drug trafficking routes and illegal gold mines.<\/p>\n

For the past two years, Mordisco\u2019s group has also used drone attacks and car bombs, to respond to an offensive from the Colombian military in the Micay Canyon<\/a>, a remote area covered with coca fields that is under the FARC-EMC\u2019s grip.<\/p>\n

Dickinson said that the latest attacks in southwest Colombia are one way for the group to show that it can sustain its \u201casymmetrical war\u201d against the government.<\/p>\n

Colombia\u2019s defense minister on Sunday said that kidnappings and lockdowns enforced by rebel groups on communities had decreased in Cauca over the past year because of the government\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

In a nationally televised address Monday night, Petro said his government has fought drug trafficking and slowed down the cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, where he said 258,000 hectares (638,000 acres) were planted with coca in late 2025.<\/p>\n

But the government\u2019s total peace strategy has come under fire from the opposition, whose candidates are hoping to benefit from the nation\u2019s security woes, as they promise to take a tougher stance on crime.<\/p>\n

Petro is barred by Colombia\u2019s constitution from running for another term. But his party\u2019s candidate, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, has promised to continue peace talks with rebel groups.<\/p>\n

Cepeda said on X that he rejected the recent attacks in southwest Colombia, and urged authorities to investigate whether they were part of an effort to interfere with the election.<\/p>\n

The request was echoed Monday night by Petro, who asked security forces in Colombia to investigate whether the explosives used in Saturday\u2019s attacks came from Ecuador, whose conservative government recently started a trade war with Colombia over security issues along their border.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to sabotage our elections so that the extreme right wins,\u201d Petro said without specifying who might be trying to undermine the May election. \u201cThey are scared,\u201d he said in his televised address. <\/p>\n

Voters in Colombia will head to the polls on May 31 to choose from 14 different presidential candidates, including Cepeda, and conservatives Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia. <\/p>\n

While Cepeda favors the continuation of Petro\u2019s \u201ctotal peace\u201d strategy, his conservative rivals have said that they favor confronting rebel groups and putting more military pressure on them before resuming peace talks.<\/p>\n

Guzm\u00e1n said that while this weekend\u2019s attacks \u201cdeepen the discomfort\u201d with the security situation in Colombia \u2014 where a presidential candidate was killed last year<\/a> \u2014 both sides will try to profit from this new wave of violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment supporters will use the attacks as an opportunity to say that that this is exactly why we need to reach urgent agreements with (rebel) groups,\u201d Guzm\u00e1n said. \u201cDetractors will say this is why we need to more aggressively attack them.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/latin-america<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) \u2014 A spate of attacks against civilians and military bases in Colombia\u2019s southwestern region has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[219,2126,13158,351,286,13163,50,6055,8,218,98,13159,9,13160,13162,67,2230,13164,13161,1468,7,917,760,226,106],"class_list":{"0":"post-21644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-central-america","9":"tag-colombia","10":"tag-colombia-government","11":"tag-diplomacy","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-elizabeth-dickinson","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-gustavo-petro","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-latin-america","18":"tag-military-and-defense","19":"tag-nestor-vera","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-paloma-valencia","22":"tag-political-debates","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-rebellions-and-uprisings","25":"tag-revolutionary-armed-forces-of-colombia","26":"tag-sergio-guzmn","27":"tag-south-america","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-violence","30":"tag-voting","31":"tag-war-and-unrest","32":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116482002393278364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}