Officials accuse National Liberation Army of launching strike followed by clash inside military compound
An attack involving explosives dropped from drones followed by a clash inside a military compound in north-eastern Colombia has killed at least three soldiers and wounded four, Colombia’s army said on Saturday.
Local authorities blamed the attack – which took place late on Friday – on the rebel National Liberation Army (ELN).
Continue reading...Abelardo De La Espriella posts video of himself with rows of body bags as performative populism continues to sweep Americas
Colombia’s hardline president, Abelardo De La Espriella, has provoked outrage after posting a video on social media in which he strides through rows of white body bags that he says contained the corpses of 23 “neutralised” guerrillas.
De La Espriella took power last month vowing “all-out war” against illegal armed groups and he published the footage on Thursday in an apparent attempt to show he was fulfilling that pledge.
Continue reading...Far-right leader echoes ally Donald Trump and says operations to ‘track down illegal immigrants’ should begin this week, amid earthquake aftermath
Colombia’s far-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has announced a crackdown on immigrants, ordering authorities to detain and deport people who are in the country irregularly or have committed crimes.
In office for just over two weeks, the millionaire former lawyer made the announcement on Sunday as the country continued to grapple with the aftermath of a 7.4-magnitude earthquake on 10 August that killed more than 300 people and destroyed more than 30,000 homes.
Continue reading...US Southern Command has struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing two accused of trafficking drugs
The US military has launched a deadly strike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of drug trafficking.
On Monday, US Southern Command (SouthCom) announced it “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific”.
Continue reading...Beto Coral held up banners in Florida warning fellow Colombians to not vote for Abelardo de la Espriella
In the week before Colombia’s presidential election, Beto Coral, a well-known activist living in the United States, travelled to Florida to persuade fellow Colombians not to vote for the far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Coral held banners outside polling stations in Miami warning that the millionaire lawyer, whose candidacy was endorsed by Donald Trump, would “help deport all of you”.
Continue reading...Trump ally Abelardo De La Espriella vows to start ‘profound transformation’ of country’s destiny as he is sworn in
The Trump administration plans to provide $1bn in security assistance to the government of Colombia’s new rightwing president, the US state department announced, soon after Abelardo De La Espriella was sworn in and used his inaugural speech to pledge a vigorous fight against drug trafficking, as well as austerity measures to restore confidence in the economy.
De La Espriella, 48, won June’s runoff election with promises to crack down on armed groups, shrink the state by as much as 40% and revive the oil and gas sector.
Continue reading...Luis Carlos Rúa revealed himself to be Elefante blanco just three days before election for ‘his own safety’. Now he is tackling graft from senate floor
When 102 senators were sworn in for Colombia’s latest parliamentary session, they included 32 women, 69 men – and one cartoon elephant.
He had some difficulty making his way down the narrow central aisle of Congress’s ceremonial chamber, weaving past fellow senators in sharply tailored suits and dresses, before taking the oath in his pot-bellied white plush costume.
Continue reading...Leftist Iván Cepeda conceded to far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella who won by razor-thin margin
The defeated leftwing candidate in Colombia’s presidential runoff has conceded to the far-right, Trump-admiring millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella.
Since Sunday night, the preliminary count had already pointed to a De la Espriella victory by a razor-thin margin of less than 1% of the vote.
Continue reading...Cases reported in 83 countries, with at least 10,600 students and staff killed, injured, abducted or arrested, GCPEA says
Attacks on education globally have surged by 40% with more than 8,556 recorded incidents and 10,600 students and staff killed, injured, abducted, arrested or otherwise harmed in 2024 and 2025, according to new research.
Attacks were reported in 83 countries, with the highest incidences recorded in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Palestine and Ukraine.
Continue reading...Success of far-right presidential candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, suggests some voters are ‘fed up with politics’
The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda have just under three weeks to compete for the roughly 3.6m votes that did not go to either of them in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election.
That is no insignificant number, given that De la Espriella’s lead over Cepeda amounted to little more than 670,000 votes – 43.7% to 40.9%.
Continue reading...Lawyer and Trump admirer has risen rapidly in the polls and will face Iván Cepeda in election runoff in three weeks
The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by leftwing president Gustavo Petro, in the runoff.
With 100% of ballots counted, the outsider and Donald Trump admirer Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote – just over 10.3m votes – compared with 40.9% (about 9.6m votes) for Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who has served as a senator since 2014.
Continue reading...Ballots are being cast in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential elections
Colombians are casting ballots in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential election, choosing between candidates with radically diverging visions for the future of peace in a country haunted by decades of armed conflict.
The vote on Sunday, seen as a referendum on outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s policies, comes 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Continue reading...Sunday’s presidential vote is contest between left and right – and between contradictory proposals for dealing with the decades-long armed conflict
Mateo Pérez Rueda was one internship away from completing a degree in political science. The 24-year-old also worked as a bicycle delivery rider and sold fruit salads and juice to finance his passion: the Colombian independent digital magazine El Confidente.
On 4 May he travelled to Briceño, in the western province of Antioquia, to report on the long-running conflict between the army, paramilitaries and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Continue reading...Rival groups are vying for territorial control of strategic cocaine production and trafficking region
At least 52 guerrilla fighters have been killed in clashes between two rival armed groups vying for territorial control of a strategic cocaine production and trafficking region in south-east Colombia, a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) involved in the fighting has said.
The clashes, the most violent in recent months, took place in the jungles of the department of Guaviare, near the village of Barranco Colorado.
Continue reading...Colombia is a global leader in climate activism. Could US influence drag country to a future of mining and fracking?
Several hours after dark in a quiet Caribbean neighbourhood, a cluster of environmental activists gather on plastic chairs between a mango tree and a courtyard wall emblazoned with the words “Colombia, respira!” (Breathe, Colombia).
So many people have turned up that some have to stand. That is because tonight’s speaker is Susana Muhamad, one of the most admired socio-environmental campaigners in the world, and this is a moment of profound historical significance.
Continue reading...Clashes between demonstrators and police in La Paz have entered second week, shaking centre-right president
Protests blocking roads across Bolivia and turning the centre of the capital, La Paz, into a battleground between demonstrators and police have entered a second week.
It is the most turbulent moment of the centre-right president Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s mere six months in office since he ended nearly two decades of rule by the leftwing Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).
Continue reading...The singer was one of her country’s most’s popular musical exports, and travelled the world with an evangelistic vision for spreading cumbia music
Totó la Momposina, one of the most celebrated musicians in Colombian history, has died aged 85.
Her three children announced her death from a heart attack on Instagram. “Totó was a woman who, with her voice and extraordinary dedication, carried the culture and memory of the Colombian people to the far corners of the world,” they added.
Continue reading...All victims of US strikes in eastern Pacific and the Caribbean identified so far came from extremely poor communities
A five-month investigation has named 13 previously unidentified victims of US attacks on boats allegedly carrying narcotics in a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
It is unclear if the US has ever identified any of its 194 victims before attacking them, and the names of just three had previously emerged, after their families launched legal cases against the White House.
Continue reading...Anant Ambani revives offer to transport 80 animals, all descendants of Colombian drug kingpin’s pets, to India
It remains one of the strangest conundrums in modern zoological history – what to do with the descendants of Pablo Escobar’s hippos?
The animals – herbivores native to sub-Saharan Africa – were originally imported into Colombia by the drug kingpin for his own entertainment. But the beasts and their offspring were left to roam free after his death in 1993.
Continue reading...Cocaine-trafficking rebels blamed for worst attack on civilians in decades, which also left 56 people injured
The death toll in a Colombian highway bombing blamed on cocaine-trafficking rebels has risen to 21, the government said on Monday, in the country’s worst attack on civilians in decades and just ahead of elections.
The attack on Saturday left 56 injured and buses and vans mangled on the Pan-American Highway, in the restive south-western Cauca department.
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