A soldier died and two were wounded Wednesday when a bomb that guerrilla fighters had attached to a donkey exploded in northwest Colombia, a local government official said.
The attack in Valdivia in Colombia’s Antioquia department was attributed to the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish language acronym ELN, with which the government has suspended peace talks as the conflict-torn South American country faces its worst violence in a decade.
The talks were frozen in January, when the ELN was blamed for over 100 deaths in raids near the border with Venezuela. The group has intensified its attacks on Colombia’s security forces since then.
Antioquia governor Andres Julian Rendon announced the attack in a post on X, saying one officer was killed and two injured.
The attack was carried out using an “equine loaded with explosives” and sent toward a platoon of soldiers, he said.
“This government insists on talking about total peace and now with the tale of urban peace,” Rendon said on X. “Emboldened bandits navigating in impunity.”
In a subsequent post, Rendon identified the fallen soldier as Lieutenant Jhonatan Arbey Monsalve Moreno.
“He was serving the country with heroism when [ELN] criminals attacked his unit,” Rendon said.
With the stated goal of achieving “total peace” after decades of conflict, leftist President Gustavo Petro took office in 2022 and reopened peace talks with an array of armed groups.
Colombia has enjoyed almost a decade of relative peace since the signing of a deal in 2016 led to the disarmament of its biggest rebel army, the FARC.
Yet pockets of the country are still controlled by assorted left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels vying for control of narcotics production, illegal mining and trafficking routes. The U.S. has designated FARC and ELN as foreign terrorist organizations.
During Petro’s term, observers say armed groups financed by the cocaine trade have only grown stronger.
In January, dozens of people were killed in Colombia’s northeast region following failed attempts to hold peace talks with the ELN. Later that month, Colombia’s government announced a $700,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of four leaders of the rebel group.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
