International

Petro considers that the ELN attack in Arauca “closes a peace process with blood”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas against a military base in Puerto Jordán, in the department of Arauca (east), which left two soldiers dead and 27 injured, and assured that “it is an action that closes a peace process with blood.”

“The consequences of the actions and the flow of history today bring us a dramatic and repeated event in our last years, a dump loaded with explosives that injures 27 young people and kills two, within the data I have, put by the ELN with whom we were talking about peace,” said Petro the inauguration of magistrate Claudia Regina Expósito as a member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary.

The president compared the attack to the attack against the Colombian Police Cadet School in Bogotá, which in January 2019 left 20 dead and 68 injured, including an Ecuadorian cadet, and which put an end to the dialogue that the Government was maintaining with that guerrilla at that time.

“And obviously, as happened that time in another place near here, at the Police School, because many police officers died, ensigns who were studying there, because it is practically an action that closes a peace process with blood,” he added.

The Colombian Government and the ELN began a new peace negotiation in November 2022 in Caracas that, however, stalled at the beginning of this year due to the demands of the guerrilla that the Executive remove them from the list of terrorist groups and abandon regional dialogues such as the one it maintains in the department of Nariño (southwest) with Comuneros del Sur, supposedly split from the ELN.

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During the negotiations in Caracas, Havana and Mexico City, the parties agreed to a one-year bilateral ceasefire, the longest agreed with that guerrilla, which ended on August 3, after which the ELN resumed its attacks against public force and infrastructure in different parts of the country, especially in Arauca, where it is particularly strong.

“And it’s like an eternal becoming, to silence a part of the people and continue in wars, killing each other again and again as if that were our story,” the president lamented.

The Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristo, also expressed himself in this line: “You cannot follow a negotiating table in the midst of the blood of our wounded soldiers, of the civilian population. The ELN did not understand the message (…) has lost a historic opportunity to negotiate peace; it insists on violence, it insists on harming Colombians.”

“The ELN, definitely, was left by the train of history,” Cristo concluded.

The mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, considered that “the decision of the National Government to end the peace process is the right one.”

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“Colombia cannot negotiate with those who have not given any demonstration of having a will for peace,” Galán said in his X account, in which he regretted “the attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and injured another 27 in Jordán, Arauca.”

The action was at the Puerto Jordán military base, in Arauca (east), which “was attacked with improvised explosive devices thrown from a dump mantip.”

According to figures provided by the Ministry of Defense, 27 soldiers were injured, “of which 20 have splinters” and seven are “seriously injured.”

Last Sunday, two soldiers died in a rural area of Tame (Arauca) in an attack attributed to the ELN that shot them while they were at a checkpoint.

This terrorist escalation also includes attacks on the Caño Limón-Coveñas and Bicentenario pipelines, two of the most important in the country.

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The Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, 770 kilometers long, transports oil from the Arauca wells to Coveñas, a Colombian port in the Caribbean Sea.

International

Peruvian presidential candidate Napoleón Becerra dies in campaign road accident

Presidential candidate Napoleón Becerra, representing the Partido de los Trabajadores y Emprendedores (PTE) in Peru, died in a traffic accident while traveling to a campaign event, local authorities confirmed Sunday.

Becerra, who also served as president of the centrist political party, ranked among the lowest in opinion polls in a crowded field of more than 30 candidates competing in the presidential election scheduled for April 12.

Recent surveys place Rafael López Aliaga at the top of voter preferences.

The accident occurred near the town of Ayacucho, in southern Peru, when the vehicle carrying the candidate overturned for reasons that remain under investigation.

“The candidate Becerra has died,” Balvin Huamani, mayor of the district of Pilpichaca, told RPP radio.

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According to Huamani, he personally transported the 61-year-old candidate to a local health center, where doctors confirmed his death.

The Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE) expressed condolences over Becerra’s passing and wished a speedy recovery to the three people who were traveling with him and were injured in the crash.

International

Noboa intensifies anti-cartel crackdown as violence persists in Ecuador

A close ally of Washington, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has pursued a hardline security strategy against cocaine cartels for more than two years, yet homicide, disappearance and extortion rates remain high across the country.

Between Sunday night and the morning of March 31, Ecuador’s armed forces will launch a “very strong offensive” with “advisory support” from the United States, Interior Minister John Reimberg announced Tuesday.

The government has kept details of the operation confidential and has not confirmed whether U.S. troops will be deployed on Ecuadorian soil, as has occurred at times during Noboa’s administration.

As part of the security measures, residents in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, and El Oro will be subject to a nightly curfew from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. local time for the next two weeks.

“We are in a war,” Reimberg said, urging citizens to remain indoors. “Do not take risks. Stay home and allow the security forces and our allies to do the work that must be done.”

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Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine, it has become a major departure point for drugs heading to the United States. Meanwhile, the violence associated with trafficking has increasingly affected the local population.

Bordering the world’s largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has gone from being considered a relatively peaceful country to recording one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America—52 killings per 100,000 inhabitants—according to the **Observatory of Organized Crime.

International

Peruvian presidential candidate proposes death penalty amid crime surge

Peru is facing an unprecedented surge in crime ahead of its presidential election scheduled for April 12, with violence fueled by extortion networks and a wave of contract killings linked to organized crime.

Police data show that 2,200 homicides tied to organized crime were recorded in 2025, while extortion complaints increased by 19%, underscoring the growing security crisis in the South American nation.

Amid this backdrop, presidential candidate Álvarez has proposed reinstating the death penalty if elected, arguing that extreme measures are needed to curb the violence.

To implement the proposal, Álvarez said Peru would withdraw from the American Convention on Human Rights—also known as the Pact of San José—which the country signed in 1978. The agreement prevents member states that have abolished capital punishment from reinstating it.

Currently, Peruvian law only allows the death penalty in cases of treason during wartime.

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“We have to leave the Pact of San José and apply the death penalty in Peru because those miserable criminals don’t deserve to live,” Álvarez told AFP during a campaign stop at a market in Callao, the port city neighboring Lima.

“An iron fist against those criminals,” he added, proposing to declare hitmen as military targets.

During the campaign event, Álvarez walked through stalls selling vegetables, groceries, and fish, greeting vendors while musicians played cumbia music nearby.

The 62-year-old candidate, who spent more than four decades working in television as a comedian, is a newcomer to politics and is running for president under the País para Todos party.

Polls place him fifth in voter preference with nearly 4% support in a fragmented race featuring 36 candidates.