International

Colombian forces kill FARC dissident leader

AFP

Colombian forces have killed FARC dissident leader Nestor Vera and nine other rebels in a raid in the country’s southwest, the defense minister said on Friday.

The operation “allowed us to neutralize nine individuals on the FARC dissident frontline as well as… Ivan Mordisco,” minister Diego Molano told reporters, using Vera’s nom de guerre.

“The last major leader of the FARC has fallen,” Molano added, and described this as the “final blow” to the renegade movement.

Hundreds of dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have continued fighting after their comrades lay down arms under a 2016 peace accord that ended more than half a century of armed conflict.

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Vera, one of Colombia’s most wanted men, recently took command of a group of some 2,000 dissidents, the so-called Armando Rios front, after the presumed death of leader “Gentil Duarte” in fighting with a drug gang in neighboring Venezuela in May, according to Colombian intelligence.

A reward of $700,000 had been on offer for information on Vera’s whereabouts.

Some 500 soldiers were deployed in the Colombian jungle several weeks ago on a mission to find Vera, according to General Luis Fernando Navarro.

Vera and his comrades were ultimately killed in an air force-led operation on July 8.

– ‘Fundamental blow’ –

Just months before the 2016 agreement was signed, Vera became the first FARC leader to renounce the peace process with several of his subordinates.

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Despite the agreement, Colombia has seen a flare-up of violence due to fighting over territory and resources among the dissidents, the hold-out ELN rebel group, paramilitary forces and drug cartels.

The government says Vera and his men were engaged in a fierce dispute over drug trafficking routes with another dissident faction called Segunda Marquetalia, led by former FARC chief Ivan Marquez.

Marquez had signed the 2016 peace pact only to take up arms again, in 2019.

Bogota says Marquez was injured in a recent attack in Venezuela, and is hospitalized there, though Caracas said this was mere speculation.

“Today in Colombia there are none of the leaders, the big capos of the former FARC… it is a fundamental blow to the plans they had for regeneration,” said the defense minister, Molano.

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With no unified command, FARC dissident fighters are thought to number some 5,200 scattered around the country, according to the Indepaz monitoring group.

They are financed mainly by drug trafficking and illegal mining.

The majority are new recruits who were never FARC members, according to Indepaz.

International

Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction

Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.

Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.

Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.

However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.

Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.

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He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.

His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.

Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.

International

U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince

The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.

Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.

“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.

Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.

According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.

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International

Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations

The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.

“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”

The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.

The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”

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Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.