President Iván Duque said that the organization is also responsible for the violence and riots that took place in the 2021 protests.
The ELN guerrilla took responsibility this Saturday for the explosives attack that left 13 police officers from the riot squad injured the night before in the Colombian city of Cali (southwest).
“We reported that at 9:55 pm on January 7, our units carried out action against the ESMAD of the police (…) in the Puerto Resistencia sector,” reads a statement released by that guerrilla on a website of rebel propaganda.
In a first balance, President Iván Duque reported 11 soldiers injured in the attack with explosives, but the number rose overnight.
The charge was detonated when a vehicle from the anti-riot squad (ESMAD) passed by one of the main sources of the massive anti-government protests the previous year, according to local authorities. Two wounded are in “intermediate care.”
Defense Minister Diego Molano offered a reward equivalent to $ 250,000 for a guerrilla known by the alias of El Rolo. “Presumably he is behind” this and other attacks against the security forces, Molano said at a press conference in Cali.
For his part, Duque assured on Twitter that the guerrillas seek “to influence this year’s electoral process with the support of socialist and communist dictatorships.”
The president, who will hand over power in August, assures that the leftist government of Venezuela gives refuge in its territory to leaders of the ELN and other Colombian armed groups.
Recognized as the last guerrilla in Colombia after the demobilization of the FARC, the Guevarista organization has a force of about 2,500 rebels, according to the independent study center Indepaz.
“The terrorist group ELN has claimed responsibility for the attack in the city of Cali against @PoliciaColombia and claimed responsibility for the violence unleashed months ago,” Duque added.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the country between April and June 2021 in rejection of the tax hike proposed by his government to alleviate the debacle of the pandemic, which was finally rejected under popular pressure.
The days were mostly peaceful, although there were road blockades, destruction and clashes with the public force which, according to the Ombudsman, left almost 60 civilians and two uniformed men dead.
The majority of deaths occurred in Cali, the third most populous city in the country with 2.2 million inhabitants. The government claims that the ELN financed groups that were behind the riots. (I)
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