Last March, a Colombian soldier was wounded in an attack by the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas in the Catatumbo region on the Venezuelan border. The number of soldiers killed increased to 10Military sources reported this Tuesday. “We are deeply saddened by the death of our soldier Brayan Andrés Guerrero López, who was wounded by the ELN on March 29,” the army said on Twitter.
In another message on the social network, the army expressed its solidarity with the family of the 19-year-old soldier who was being treated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Military Hospital in Bogotá.
The ELN attack with explosives and rifle explosions against a unit of the Special Energy and Road Battalion No. 10 in the hamlet of Guamalito in the municipality of El Carmen in the Norte de Santander region of the ELN was condemned by all sectors. by the Government of the country and even the United States. Due to this guerrilla action in which eight soldiers were injured, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the government delegation negotiating with the ELN for consultations.
Earlier this month, the ELN’s top commander, Eliécer Chamorro, nicknamed ‘Antonio García’, assured that this guerrilla has the “right” to attack Colombian State security forces, as a bilateral ceasefire has not been agreed upon. in peace talks with the government.
Also last week, the ELN Central Command said that the Colombian government intends to impose on issues that cannot be agreed upon at the negotiating table, such as a ceasefire. “They wanted to impose a multilateral ceasefire on us through the media, without agreement at the dialogue table at the beginning of the year,” the ELN said in a statement on social networks in 2015, and now they plan to impose it in the same way. April 4 “In the mountains of Colombia”.
President Petro announced on 31 December bilateral truce with five armed groups but ELN withdrew because this was not decided at the dialogue table between the government and that guerrilla. They also failed to get a ceasefire agreement out of the second round of negotiations in Mexico last month, despite Petro urging the negotiating team to push for it.
High Commissioner for Peace Danilo Rueda assured him that they were working on an “architecture” to achieve “a national bilateral deduction with the possibility of extension”, which in his view is better than what has been achieved with this guerrilla in other situations. Following the El Carmen attack, the government wants to speed up the ceasefire and be able to leave the next meeting scheduled in Havana in the coming weeks with a ceasefire agreement.