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Venezuela, Colombia finalize border reopening

Photo: Edinson Estupinan / AFP

| By AFP |

Venezuela and Colombia reopened the last stretch of their shared border Sunday after settling a diplomatic dispute that had kept it closed for years.

Cars honked and passengers waved flags as vehicles with license plates from the two South American countries traversed the Atanasio Girardot bridge — previously blocked by shipping containers amid high tensions.

Also known as Tienditas, the bridge was the final step necessary for a full reopening of the border since the countries restored diplomatic ties last year.

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A ceremony, which included a blessing by bishops, was held Sunday to reinaugurate the border crossing, with officials from both sides in attendance wearing white guayaberas and carrying balloons with their countries’ shared national colors — yellow, blue and red.

The neighbors share a 2,200-kilometer (1,350-mile) border through a region riddled with armed groups contending for lucrative drug trafficking and smuggling routes.

Transport over the border was partially closed seven years ago and then completely blocked in 2019 when Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro broke off diplomatic ties after Colombia under then-president Ivan Duque questioned his 2018 re-election.

Many other countries, including the United States, did not recognize Maduro’s victory in an election widely condemned as rigged.

After assuming power last year as Colombia’s first-ever left-wing president, Gustavo Petro immediately sought to re-establish ties with Venezuela and pushed to reopen the border.

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On September 26, goods trucks were allowed through border crossings that had been open only to pedestrians.

Air links have also since resumed.

Restoring ‘brotherhood’

“We have taken important steps,” Maduro said in an interview broadcast Sunday on Venezuelan state TV.

Silvano Serrano, governor of Colombia’s Norte de Santander department where the bridge is located, said that “as a single territory, today we join the historical, cultural and social brotherhood that has always identified us.”

The countries hope to reinvigorate trade, which stood at $7.2 billion in 2008, but has since  collapsed.

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The Atanasio Girardot bridge connects the Venezuelan city of Urena with Cucuta in Colombia, and had been blocked by shipping containers placed there by the Venezuelan army.

Millions have left Venezuela in recent years, as the country suffers from a deep economic crisis that has seen poverty soar, with many settling in Colombia.

Venezuela is also one of the guarantors of ongoing negotiations between the the ELN guerrilla group and the Colombian government, which hopes to reach a peace agreement similar to the historic accord signed in 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. 

On Saturday, Petro announced that a ceasefire agreement had been struck with the ELN and other armed groups that would last from January 1 to June 30.

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International

Bolsonaro is transferred to São Paulo to continue the treatment for an erysypela

Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro moved this Monday from the Amazon city of Manaus, where he was hospitalized with an erysipelas, to a hospital in São Paulo, where the treatment against that skin infection will continue.

The lawyer of the leader of the far right, Fabio Wajngarten, said on his social networks that Bolsonaro will also be examined for a possible intestinal obstruction, although he did not give more details on the matter.

Bolsonaro, 69, arrived last Friday in Manaus for some political commitments and on Saturday he was hospitalized once it was found that he suffered from erysipelas, a bacterial infection that affects the skin and subcutaneous tissue.

The Santa Julia hospital, where he was treated, reported that the former president, from 2019 to 2022, had a “table of dehydration and infectious skin process.”

The doctors did not mention the possible intestinal obstruction cited by Wajngarten, but it is a problem that Bolsonaro suffers repeatedly since, in the campaign for the 2018 elections, he was stabbed in the abdomen in the middle of a rally.

Since then, they underwent four surgeries to correct stomach problems resulting from that attack.

The former president faces serious difficulties in Justice, which investigates him in various cases, one of them linked to alleged plans to prevent the inauguration of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the 2022 elections.

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International

The number of deaths in a passenger bus accident in southern Peru rises to eleven

The number of deaths in Peru when a passenger bus crashed from the southern department of Puno to Cuzco, when it was traveling through the province of Melgar, rose to 11, official sources reported on Monday.

The head of the road police of the Puno department, David Sota Paredes, told the RPP station that the number of deaths from the accident increased to eleven, including a five-month-old baby, who have already been identified, and that in addition, 11 other injured people were transferred to the Ayaviri hospital.

The Universal company bus overturned at kilometer 1,170 of the Longitudinal road, in the district of Santa Rosa, in the province of Melgar in Puneña, in the early hours of Monday morning, confirmed the Superintent of Land Transport of People, Cargo and Goods (Sutran).

This official entity reported that it activated all its immediate attention protocols and initiated coordination with its inspectors in the region, the National Police of Peru (PNP) and the Health Emergency Operations Center of Puno to “help with the investigations that allow the causes of the accident to be determined.”

Likewise, Sutran indicated that the vehicle, with B2R959 plate, had authorization from the General Directorate of Transport Authorizations of the Ministry of Transport and Communications for the regular passenger transport service, with accident insurance and technical review in force.

“The Sutran expresses its condolences to the relatives and relatives of the victims of the unfortunate accident and vows for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he said in a statement shared on his social networks.

Last week, the roads in northern Peru recorded another accident of a passenger bus that left 27 people dead from the fall of the vehicle into a chasm in the department of Cajamarca, while another public transport unit rushed into a river, in the jungle of Amazonas, and caused the death of a policeman and 10 people injured.

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International

Israel says it will continue to negotiate a ceasefire while bombing the east of Rafah

The Israeli War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed on Monday to continue “the operation” in Rafah, south of Gaza, but agreed to send a delegation to Cairo to continue negotiating a possible ceasefire.

“Despite the fact that Hamas’ proposal is far from meeting Israel’s fundamental demands, Israel will send a high-ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement on acceptable terms,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Benny Gantz, also a member of the War Cabinet, agreed with Netanyahu. “The military operation in Rafah is an inseparable part of our continuous efforts and our commitment to return our kidnapped,” he said tonight in a statement quoted by Israeli media.

Gantz confirmed that Israel will send a delegation to Cairo although, he said, the proposal agreed by Hamas “does not correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators and contains important gaps.”

Both messages come after the announcement of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau in Hamas, that the Islamist group accepted a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, a few hours after the Israeli Army issued an “immediate” evacuation order from the east of Rafah.

In a final statement released tonight, Hamas confirmed that both Haniyeh and the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al Nakhala – a faction also present in the Gaza Strip – discussed on Monday whether or not to approve a ceasefire, and said that the decision was made as a result of “the evolution of the current situation” in Gaza.

“It was also emphasized that the resistance factions will not back down on their demands included in the proposal they agreed, in particular a (comprehensive) ceasefire, an integral withdrawal (from Israeli troops), an honorable exchange (of hostages for prisoners), reconstruction and the end of the (Israeli) siege,” Hamas recalled.

The Israeli Army confirmed that it is currently bombing the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Gazans take refuge after the start of the ground offensive on October 27, which forced the northern population to leave their homes, many of which are now destroyed.

Despite the heavy bombings and firing of flares, according to EFE on the ground, Israeli troops and tanks have not crossed the fence that separates Israel from southern Gaza.

The Army “is currently carrying out targeted attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in the east of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip,” a military statement confirmed tonight, announcing that there would be more details shortly.

For its part, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, confirmed Israeli attacks in the city of Rafah against “roads, agricultural land, residential houses and farms” in the eastern neighborhoods of Al Salam and Al Jinaina, among others, which coincide with some of the places included this morning in the evacuation letter.

In a press conference in Hebrew tonight, the Army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, recalled that the troops are prepared for a land incursion into Rafah after this morning’s evacuation order, which only affects about 100,000 Gazans among more than a million people who are overcrowded in Rafah.

Hamas warned Israel on Monday that any military takeover of Rafah will not be something simple and that his armed wing, the Qasam Brigades, are ready to defend his people.

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