BOGOTA: A police officer was injured Sunday in an attack on a UN mission monitoring the disarming of FARC rebels in Colombia as part of the group’s peace deal with the government, authorities said.
Assailants attacked the location where the FARC rebel group had a weapons stash in the southwestern town of Caloto, in Cauca department, according to police, who said a splinter group of the Marxist rebels or the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) could have been behind the violence.
But Cauca police general Edgar Rodriguez said the ELN was to blame. The ELN is currently the only group fighting the Colombian government, though it is seeking to negotiate its own peace deal.
The United Nations said in a statement that a team of their observers, national police and former FARC rebels were ambushed in Caloto.
The disarmament, mainly in June, by the roughly 7,000 members of Colombia’s biggest rebel group under the 2016 peace accord brought a halt to the war.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching the historic deal with the FARC. It was signed last November.
The conflict left a quarter of a million Colombians dead, about 60,000 unaccounted for and seven million displaced.
The FARC was born in May 1964 from a peasants’ revolt. Its ranks were made up mostly of country dwellers who rallied behind the group’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, with land reform its focus.
Attack on UN office in Colombia injures police officer
Attack on UN office in Colombia injures police officer
ICE agents to help with security at Winter Olympics
ROME: Agents from the divisive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will help support US security operations for the Winter Olympic Games in Italy next month, a spokesperson told AFP.
“At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is supporting the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations,” the agency said in a statement.
“All security operations remain under Italian authority.”
It added: “Obviously, ICE does not conduct immigration enforcement operations in foreign countries.”
The potential presence of ICE agents at the February 6-22 Games has sparked huge debate in Italy, following the outcry over the deaths of two civilians during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Italian authorities initially denied the presence of ICE and then sought to downplay any role, suggesting they would help only in security for the US delegation.
US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are attending the opening ceremony in Milan on February 6.
On Monday, the president of the northern Lombardy region, which is hosting some of the Olympic events, said their involvement would be limited to monitoring Vance and Rubio.
“It will be only in a defensive role, but I am convinced that nothing will happen,” Attilio Fontana told reporters.
However, his office then issued a statement saying he did not have any information on their presence, but was responding to a hypothetical question.
Thousands of ICE agents have been deployed by President Donald Trump in various US cities to carry out a crackdown on illegal immigration.
Their actions have prompted widespread protests, and the recent killings of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, on the streets of Minneapolis sparked outrage.
