At least seven policemen were killed in an explosives attack in western Colombia, President Gustavo Petro said, the deadliest attack on security forces since he took office, vowing to end the country’s nearly 60-year conflict. Police sources said the officers were killed on Friday when the vehicle they were traveling in was hit by explosives. “I categorically reject the explosive attack in San Luis, Huila where eight police officers were killed. Solidarity to their families,” Petros said on Twitter on Friday, citing a death toll of eight that was later revised. “These acts are a clear sabotage of absolute peace. I have asked the authorities to go to the area to investigate.” Petro, a former member of the M-19 rebel movement, has pledged to pursue “total peace” by resuming talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, implementing a 2016 peace deal with former Revolutionary Armed Forces fighters of Colombia (FARC) to reject it and negotiate the surrender of criminal gangs in exchange for reduced sentences. His predecessor, conservative Ivan Duque, had broken off peace talks with the ELN after a 2019 car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogotá that killed 22 people. Petro did not name the suspected perpetrators of Friday’s attack, but so-called dissidents from the now-defunct FARC guerrilla movement are known to be operating in the area, according to security sources. Rebel groups have rejected the peace deal negotiated by their former leadership and count about 2,400 fighters in their ranks, according to the government. Several well-known rebel commanders have been killed recently, many in fighting across the border in Venezuela. Colombia’s conflict between the government, left-wing rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and drug-trafficking gangs killed at least 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018 alone.
