Four other soldiers have been wounded in combat, as well as one of the alleged guerrillas.
At least a Colombian soldier he died and four more were wounded in combat with suspected guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the Colombian department of Arauca, bordering Venezuela. Military sources informed EFE this Friday that the clashes occurred in a rural area of Tame, between soldiers and members of the ELN’s Heroes and Martyrs front. In the fighting it also turned out wounded a guerrillawho was helped by Army nurses and then transferred to a hospital in Saravena.
Arauca is one of the departments where there is more presence of the ELN guerrillas. Due to its proximity to Venezuela, the porosity of the borders and the lack of joint patrolling, there are other groups such as several FARC dissidents -which are in conflict with each other- and common criminal groups.
The humanitarian situation in Arauca, a department with a lot of mineral wealth and oil exploitation where the guerrillas have had a marked influence for decades and the State does not have much presence, worsened at the beginning of this year due to the war waged by the ELN and the Tenth Front of the dissidents of the former FARC. At the beginning of this month, a humanitarian mission of the Colombian Ombudsman’s Office and the Catholic Church managed to free a soldier kidnapped on August 16 in that department.
Since the arrival of Gustavo Petro to the Presidency of Colombia, the ELN has released several people who were being held as part of the renewed impetus for peace negotiations that have come forward.
Last month, the Government of Colombia and the ELN made official the resumption of peace negotiations in Cuba, which had been on hold since 2019. The resumption of peace talks was one of Petro’s campaign promises, who has been open to establishing negotiations of peace with all Colombian armed groups as part of its “total peace” strategy.