The victims were returning to the police station when their vehicle passed over a minefield that was activated and after the explosion they were attacked with rifles.
At least eight Colombian policemen were murdered this friday in an ambush perpetrated in a rural area of the department of Huila, in the southwest of the country, confirmed President Gustavo Petro. The attack, whose perpetrators have not been identified, took place on the outskirts of San Luis, a village that is part of the rural area of Neiva, the capital of Huila, according to the authorities. According to the first information, the victims are two subintendents, two patrolmen and four auxiliaries.
“I strongly reject the attack with explosives that killed 8 police officers in San Luis, Huila. Solidarity with their families. These events express a clear sabotage of total peace. I have asked the authorities to travel to the territory to take over the investigation,” Petro said on his Twitter account.
Apparently, the police officers were on their way back to the police station to which they were attached after a day’s work in the San Luis corregimiento when he was activated a minefield to the passage of the truck in which they were transported. After the explosion, the uniformed men were attacked with rifle fireaccording to information collected by local media.
“We are waiting for them to confirm (the data) because we know about the displacement of the eight companions, but we have to confirm exactly what the unfortunate number is. The site is not so easily accessible, so there is an aircraft flying over there,” sources confirmed to Efe. police.
The director of the Police, Major General Henry Sanabria Cely, said on Twitter that he will go to Huila “immediately with all the institutional capacities to verify and accompany our police.” For his part, the president of the Colombian Senate, Roy Barreras, rejected “with pain” the “cowardly” murder of the policemen in a message on social networks. “They kill them in ambush. The damned drug trafficker kills humble public servants. Mourning in their families and in the Colombian family. Those who do not stop killing only deserve the strongest response from the State,” added Barreras. The director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency, Mauricio Lizcano, who rejected the “vile murder” and demanded that “the authorities must find those responsible” was also added to the convictions.
This is the first attack against the public force since Petro came to power, when the offensives against the public force were paralyzed through the so-called “pistol plan” promoted mainly by the Clan del Golfo criminal gang. A total of 36 police officers were killed as a result of these attacks by the largest criminal gang in the country which, after the extradition to the United States of its leader, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias “Othniel“, increased the attacks against the public force, especially on the Atlantic coast and the northwest of the country.