About 200 Venezuelan migrants attacked a Colombian military base with explosives, killing one soldier and wounding more than a dozen others, a top military official said on Monday.
Colombian Army General Omar Sepulveda said the migrants had been “co-opted” by Colombian guerrillas to launch the attack in El Tarra, a border town in the northeastern Norte de Santander Department.
One soldier was killed by “an explosive device” and at least 16 others were wounded during the attack on Saturday.
“Approximately 95 percent” of the attackers were Venezuelans “institutionalized” by dissidents of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group, Sepulveda told W Radio.
The migrants tried to “overrun” the barracks using “improvised explosive devices, slingshots, sticks and Molotov cocktails,” he said.
Sepulveda blamed the attack on dissident Jhon Mechas, who refused to lay down arms and join the historic 2016 peace deal that turned the FARC into a communist political party following half a century of conflict with the state.
The region around El Tarra has the largest number of illegal coca leaf plantations in the world, according to the UN.
Coca is the main ingredient in cocaine and several groups of leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug-traffickers are battling for territorial control to exploit the lucrative narcotics market.
The Colombian Army said that it was sending anti-riot troops to the region where local authorities declared a curfew until yesterday morning.
Colombia has taken in 1.8 million Venezuelans fleeing poverty and economic crisis in their homeland.
Colombian President Ivan Duque accuses Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of harboring Colombian rebels in his nation, granting them a safe haven from which to launch attacks.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver