Leftist Rebels Kill 12 Security Officials In Colombia

The National Liberation Army is Colombia’s second-largest rebel group.

Eleven of those killed were soldiers, while the other was a police officer, Mr Villegas said.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, attacked the soldiers with explosives and shots in mountainous Guican municipality, in an area belonging to the Uwa indigenous group, Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas told reporters.

Villegas said the government holds the ELN responsible for the “life and safety” of the two soldiers and reiterated the president’s vow to continue the army’s offensive against the group. They had been cast on Sunday by residents of an U’wa Indian reservation. “It is exactly the opposite”, Santos said after the attack.

“This is an event that demonstrates the ELN haven’t understood that it’s time for peace, not for war”, said Santos, adding that he ordered the military to redouble a military offensive against the ELN’s remaining 1,500 fighters, most of whom are concentrated in eastern Colombia, near where the attack took place.

The ELN and the government have been holding preliminary talks since January 2014, but have not opened a formal peace process.

The election, which also selected governors and regional mayors nationwide, is the first test of support for center-right President Juan Manual Santos, right-wing former President Alvaro Uribe, and the left since peace talks began three years ago. Since 2012, the government has worked with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest leftist extremist group, to pursue avenues to peace; earlier this month, government and FARC leaders announced they would collaborate to retrieve and return the remains of the country’s missing dead.

A proud nation of a few 7,000 people, the U’wa are known for fiercely defending their ancestral homeland in the 1990s from drilling by Occidental Petroleum.