International
The difficult fight against bloodletting on the roads in Peru
Shreed buses, frontal collisions of vehicles, invaded lanes… The scenes are repeated mainly on weekends.
Between 2021 and 2023 there was an annual average of 3,000 deaths on the roads, according to the National Road Safety Observatory of the Ministry of Transport (ONSV), which links the high accident with three main causes: recklessness at the wheel, speeding and drunkenness.
By the beginning of May, 970 people had died on the slopes. And there is still a lack of the school holiday season and several holidays, including the end of the year, when accidents usually increase.
In Peru, the mortality rate from traffic accidents was 14 people per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019, compared to the average of 17 victims per 100,000 in the Americas, according to the World Bank.
In 2023, 87,172 accidents were officially reported that left 3,138 dead.
The efforts of the authorities to improve control managed to reduce the rate to 9.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants last year, but the bloodlet on the roads continues.
Cornelio lost his family in March. A bus invaded the opposite lane of the Panamericana Highway and hit the family van, 147 km north of Lima.
This 36-year-old farmer was going ahead in another vehicle along with some workers. His wife, his two children, two brothers and a sister-in-law never arrived at the meeting place.
“My soul broke, we will never recover from this, for pleasure we have made the house. Now we have a void,” he tells AFP in a choppy voice.
Last month, in only four accidents there were 60 deaths, a figure not included in the count until the beginning of May.
“It is true that there are contributory factors, for example, the climatic issue, the state of a vehicle or a road, the human factor is predominant and determining,” Larry Ampuero, spokesman for the Superintendence of Transport (Sutran), tells AFP.
According to that organization, 70% of accidents occur in cities and 30% on roads.
“There is informality due to lack of control, but also there is no good road network, we have an infrastructure in poor condition and lack of maintenance,” said Martín Ojeda, manager of the interprovincial transport guild to RPP radio.
The human factor is in many cases related to the fatigue of the drivers of the public transport service. The law establishes a limit of ten hours a day for driving buses.
“Drivers generally suffer from drowsiness or tiredness because they work more hours than allowed,” Luis Quispe, director of Luz Ámbar, an NGO that studies the phenomenon of the high accident rate, tells AFP.
The interprovincial service guild maintains that it complies with the rules and that each bus travels with a spare driver, but the drivers question it.
“It is the fault of certain factors, both of the driver or the company that suddenly makes us work too many hours, practically 24 hours,” bus driver Julio Camarena tells AFP.
“They also have to see the state of the roads, which is terrible at the national level, we would say for the most part,” adds Camarena, 51, from the Yerbateros bus terminal in Lima.
On its side, the Association of Victims of Traffic Accidents (Aviactran) points to the indolence of the authorities and the lack of justice as the biggest problems on the roads.
“The State is not worried that accidents will increase, it does not want to solve the problem,” Carlos Villegas, president of that organization, tells AFP.
According to Villegas, so far this year there are “more than 36,000 accidents.”
“The authorities are responsible for all traffic accidents, that’s why we are going to sue them,” he emphasizes.
80% of the injured – he adds – do not receive justice in their lawsuits against companies and authorities “for corruption” of the system.
“We feel very disappointed with the State,” says Villegas, who created Aviactran because a drunk doctor at the wheel seriously injured his nine-year-old son in 2006.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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