FARC suspend unilateral ceasefire over Colombia gov’t raid
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have called off a five-month-old unilateral ceasefire in response to an airstrike by the government forces, which killed 26 of its members.
“We didn’t plan to suspend the ceasefire,” said Colombia’s FARC in a statement on its official website on Friday, adding, “but the incoherence of the [President Juan Manuel] Santos administration has achieved it, after five months of ground and air offensives against our units across the country.”
On Thursday, the Colombian army raided a rebel unit in the western region of Cauca, who allegedly killed an army lieutenant on Gorgona Island in November.
The air raid came weeks after Santos lifted a suspension of airstrikes on the FARC positions. The airstrikes against Latin America’s oldest rebel group had been suspended on March 11 in recognition of their ceasefire.
The FARC rebels, who have launched a series of deadly attacks against the Colombian military in recent months, attacked a garrison in April. At least 11 Colombian soldiers were killed and nearly 20 others injured in the deadly assault.
Last year, on December 20, FARC launched an indefinite, unilateral ceasefire in an effort to boost the peace talks in the Cuban capital of Havana, which began in November 2012, in an attempt to end a five-decade-long conflict.
The two-year-old peace talks have so far produced only partial accords on several issues, namely land reform, political participation and drug trafficking. However, they have yet to yield a final deal at ending a half-century-old conflict between the rebels and the US-backed government.
Fate of peace talks
Despite the Thursday raid on FARC’s position by the Colombian army, Santos has called on the rebel group to speed up the peace talks to prevent further bloodshed.
The FARC negotiators insist on “the need to grant the bilateral ceasefire” by the Santos administration, “for the health of the peace process and to avoid more victims.” They also said that “against our will we have to pursue dialogue in the midst of confrontation.”
FARC has been fighting the government since 1964. The rebel organization is thought to have around 8,000 fighters operating across a large swathe of the eastern jungles of the Andean country.
The fighting has led to the death of over 200,000 people while more than five million people have been uprooted.
MIS/HSN
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