Colombia Airstrike Kills 20 Guerrillas in Deadliest Raid of the New Government

COLOMBIA · SECURITY

A Colombia airstrike has killed 20 guerrilla fighters, the deadliest raid since the new government took office — and the clearest signal yet that negotiations have been replaced by a sustained military offensive.

The deadliest strike of the new government

Military officials said the bombing targeted a camp of FARC dissidents — fighters who rejected the 2016 peace accord with the state and never laid down their weapons. The death toll of 20 makes it the single deadliest Colombia airstrike since President Abelardo de la Espriella took office last month.

It is also the third aerial bombardment in three weeks. That tempo is new. Under the previous government, a Colombia airstrike against an armed group was rare and politically costly. Now such strikes are the centrepiece of security policy.

The government has framed each strike as a precision operation against high-value targets. De la Espriella, who campaigned on ending his predecessor’s “total peace” talks, has promised that guerrilla commanders will have “no sanctuary” anywhere in Colombia.

An offensive that keeps escalating

This article updates our earlier reporting. Last week’s bombing in El Retorno, Guaviare — Operation AMON, against the faction of commander “Calarcá” — killed eleven people. Three of them were minors who had been forcibly recruited, a fact that drew a sharp warning from Colombia’s ombudsman.

Days after that raid, the military killed a dissident commander known as “Felipe” or “Arcadio” in Valle del Cauca. The new strike, with 20 dead, is nearly double the Guaviare toll and shows the campaign is widening rather than slowing.

The humanitarian question has not gone away. When the Guaviare bombing killed three minors, legal experts noted that children forced into armed groups keep reinforced protection under international law. Whether minors were present at the latest target is not yet known. The ombudsman’s office has asked for information on every aerial operation.

Separately: the Clan del Golfo loses its chief of hitmen

The airstrike was not the week’s only blow against armed groups. In a separate ground operation, the army killed a man known by the alias “Perjuicio”, described by officials as the chief of hitmen of the Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s most powerful drug cartel.

The Clan del Golfo, also called the Gulf Clan, controls key cocaine trafficking routes along the Caribbean coast and the Panamanian border. Its “hitmen chief” ran the enforcement arm — the gunmen used to discipline rivals, extort businesses and attack security forces. Removing him disrupts the cartel’s internal command, at least temporarily.

The group had been in on-and-off peace talks with the previous government. Those talks collapsed as the new administration took office and, jointly with the United States, named the cartel’s top commanders as military targets, France 24 reported earlier this year.

The peace managers who vanished

There is a loose end from the old policy. Under “total peace”, the previous administration designated dozens of jailed and semi-free intermediaries as “peace managers” — people tasked with carrying messages between the government and armed groups. Many were released from prison or spared arrest to do that work.

Colombian media report that several of these managers, some with long criminal records, have now disappeared. Authorities presume they have fled, either abroad or back into the structures they once negotiated with. The new justice ministry has said it will review each release and seek arrest warrants where sentences remain open.

The episode is politically explosive. Critics of the old policy say it freed criminals who never intended peace. Defenders say the managers were a standard tool of negotiation and that their flight proves only that the war has restarted, not that the talks were a fraud.

What the offensive means

Three bombardments in three weeks, a cartel enforcer dead, and a review of every concession granted under the old talks: the direction is unmistakable. Colombia has moved from a government that negotiated with nearly every armed group at once to one that is fighting several of them at once.

The strategy carries Washington’s imprint. The US Southern Command chief visited Bogotá as the Guaviare operation unfolded, and the two governments have agreed to jointly target the country’s top narco bosses — a pact that analysts at InSight Crime say marks the definitive end of the negotiation era.

The risks are equally clear. Armed groups still recruit minors, who then die in bombings their commanders invited. Retaliation against civilians in coca regions is likely. And the vanished peace managers are a reminder that yesterday’s negotiating channels can become tomorrow’s intelligence for the other side.

The context matters for readers new to Colombia’s conflict. The FARC, once the hemisphere’s oldest guerrilla army, signed a peace deal in 2016 and disarmed. But several thousand fighters refused the accord and formed dissident factions. They now battle the ELN, another leftist guerrilla force, and the Clan del Golfo for coca crops, cocaine routes and illegal mining territory. Colombia produces roughly 70 percent of the world’s cocaine, and that economy pays for every side’s war.

“Total peace” was the previous government’s answer: negotiate with all of these groups simultaneously, offer legal benefits, and trade concessions for calm. It produced ceasefires that broke, talks that stalled and, in the end, a voter backlash that carried de la Espriella into office on a promise of force.

For now, the government is betting that force will succeed where talks stalled. The next weeks will show whether the armed groups scatter, regroup — or answer the offensive with one of their own.

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error