BOGOTA: Colombia’s government on Thursday blamed the country’s second-largest rebel group for the disappearance of three journalists in a lawless border region.
Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said intelligence reports “confirm with certainty” that the National Liberation Army, or ELN, was responsible for the journalists going missing.
He said a more than prudent amount of time had passed since they were last heard from and he insisted it was up to the guerrillas to assure their safe return.
“From this point on the responsibility for the safety and freedom of these three citizens is exclusively in their hands,” Villegas said.
The ELN, whose army of 1,500 guerrillas is fragmented, has not commented on the situation. Salud Hernandez-Mora, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and one of Colombia’s most-read columnists, disappeared over the weekend while on assignment in the volatile Catatumbo region on the border with Venezuela.
She was last seen arguing with an unidentified man and then taking a motorcycle to an unknown destination. Two journalists from the RCN network went missing Monday later while covering the search for the Spanish journalist.
On Wednesday, President Juan Manuel Santos held out the possibility that Henandez-Mora might have chosen to report from inside of a rebel camp and simply hadn’t returned.
But Villegas’ comments were likely to ratchet up concern that the three journalists were being held against their will.
and put pressure on Santos to break off a peace process with the Cuban revolution-inspired ELN. After holding out for years, the ELN announced in March that it was joining the much larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in formal talks with the government aimed at ending the country’s half-century conflict.
But unlike the FARC, which has demonstrated repeatedly its interest in leaving behind the battlefield, the more ideologically radical ELN has been more defiant, even snubbing Santos’ insistence that it renounce kidnapping and return all captives in order for the talks to officially begin.
“With every hour that passes the political value of these kidnappings increases because the ELN mistakenly believes they can force the government on its knees and impose negotiating conditions with a captive of such stature,” said Alejandro Reyes, a columnist for the newspaper El Espectador.
“My biggest fear is that the saga of Ingrid Betancourt could be repeated,” Reyes added, referring to the former presidential candidate who was held hostage six years by the FARC until her rescue in 2008.
Santos’ government later issued a statement calling for the journalists’ immediate release.
“In a country that today is moving toward a stable and enduring peace, it’s unacceptable that these attacks against society continue to take place,” Frank Pearl, the chief negotiator for the peace process with the ELN, said in the statement.
An extensive search led by the army has produced few leads on the missing journalists. The government requested the involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross but the humanitarian group said it had not been contacted by the rebels or any other group.
The Jamaica-sized Catatumbo region of northeastern Colombia is among the country’s poorest, most marginalized backwaters. It is a major coca-growing area and corridor for cocaine smuggling to Venezuela, with the state able to maintain only a few militarized strongholds.
In addition to the ELN, remnants of the Popular Liberation Army are still active in the area as is the FARC.
Colombia blames rebels for disappearance of journalists
Colombia blames rebels for disappearance of journalists
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
