Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Monday suspended a truce with leftist guerrillas in four flashpoint regions following the killing of four Indigenous children by those rebels.
Petro said the bilateral ceasefire “is suspended and all offensive operations are reactivated” in the Meta, Caqueta, Guaviare and Putumayo regions.
Four children and teenagers from the Murui Indigenous community were executed in southern Colombia by dissidents of the now- disarmed Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, authorities said on Sunday.
Those four regions are a stronghold of FARC dissident guerrillas who refused to join a 2016 peace accord that saw most of the rebels lay down their arms and form a communist political party.
The four Murui minors were executed on the border between the southern departments of Caqueta and Amazonas after defecting from a dissident faction of FARC called the Carolina Ramirez front, the country’s human rights ombudsman said in statement on Sunday.
The front was among the groups that adhered to a ceasefire proposed by the government several months ago, and it was set to begin new peace talks soon with the government.
“Recruiting and killing children and adolescents from Indigenous communities are not exactly gestures of goodwill to achieve peace. In addition to being evident violations of international humanitarian law,” the ombudsman noted.
Petro slammed the murders as “an atrocious crime, a blow to peace” and warned of “measures against these actions.”
At the end of last year, Petro announced a bilateral ceasefire with numerous armed groups.
But three of those truces have now ended following the breakdown of the peace process with the National Liberation Army guerrillas and the Gulf Clan drug traffickers.
