ELN negotiators (Screenshot: YouTube)

A recent order to carry out airstrikes on guerrilla group ELN “fatally injured” efforts to resume peace talks between Colombia’s longest-living guerrilla group and the administration of President Gustavo Petro, the rebels said Tuesday.

Petro said last week that he ordered an airstrike on a suspected guerrilla position in the northeastern Catatumbo region hours before meeting his US counterpart Donald Trump.

According to the Medical Examiner’s Office, the strike killed seven people, including one minor.

In the meeting, Petro and the US Government agreed to work together to capture or kill one of the ELN’s top commanders, Gustavo Anibal Giraldo, a.k.a. “Pablito,” according to Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Pablito has long been considered one of the ELN’s most radical commanders and a potential opponent of a peace process to end decades of armed conflict between the rebels and the State.

In a first response, the ELN said that the strike targeted the guerrillas in the same area where they met with a government commission and international representatives the day before the bombardment to negotiate a possible resumption of peace talks.

According to the guerrillas, “the Government of President Petro has decided to give in to the orders of the United States empire and place itself at the service of the neocolonial onslaught led by Donald Trump.”

Peace policies and changes in favor of the majority have been fatally injured; with the government’s increasing militarization, there can be no talk of peace or overcoming the conflict, let alone handing over national sovereignty to a genocidal empire.

ELN

Petro suspended peace talks with the ELN in response to a brutal guerrilla offensive that targeted a rival guerrilla group in Catatumbo and displaced almost one third of the population in the region in January of last year.

Multiple efforts to resume the talks have failed.