President Gustavo Petro announced early on Tuesday that he had convened a extraordinary security council due to the serious public order situation that is taking place in Cauca. It is expected that the decisions of this meeting will be known at the end of the meeting.
(Can read: Dissident attack in Cauca leaves 4 soldiers dead and 6 wounded)
“Peace is the supreme good of the Nation,” said the president.
And it is that in the last days they have registered several episodes of violence against the public force that have put the department on alert.
EL TIEMPO confirmed with Army sources that around 3 in the morning on December 6, the ‘Jaime Martínez’ dissidents attacked soldiers who were camping in the Munchique village of Buenos Aires, Cauca, with bursts of rifles, grenades and tattoos.
Four uniformed officers died, six are wounded and seven are missing.
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At the beginning of December, the inhabitants of the Chimborazo indigenous reservation, located in Morales, Cauca, warned of the arrival of “more than a thousand heavily armed men” who identified themselves as part of said dissidence.
In a statement, the community reported that the armed forces arrived around 1 pm on November 29 and broke into their ancestral territory and are occupying sacred places, schools, sports centers, the health post, and roads.
“It is feared that there will be a massacre, violence against the community, for this reason calls are made to national and international human rights organizations and the Ombudsman’s Office,” they said at the time.
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On December 4, it was reported that three soldiers were killed and two more were wounded. The Army confirmed that the events occurred in the midst of a confrontation with illegal armed groups.
The fatalities were the third corporal Andrés David Aguilar, a native of Tierralta, Córdoba; professional soldiers Dubán Alfonso de Oro and Hair Domínguez Narváez, from Soledad, Atlántico, and Buesaco, Nariño.
At the beginning of this month, likewise, an explosive charge was detonated in a police station in the town of El Bordo, jurisdiction of the municipality of El Patía, south of Cauca.
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The Secretary of Government, Diego Aguilar, reported that this attack caused minor damage. There were no injuries or fatalities.
Aura Saavedra Alvarez
POLITICAL WRITING