The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, sent this Sunday to part of his cabinetincluding ministers and directors of administrative departments, to El Plateado, the town in the southwest of the country where the Army launched an operation on Saturday to regain the control that a FARC dissident has in the area.
The delegation includes, among others, the Ministers of Defense, Iván Velásquez; Environment, Susana Muhamad; Mines and Energy, Andrés Camacho; Information and Communications Technologies, Mauricio Lizcano; Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, and Agriculture, Martha Carvajalino.
Likewise, the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic (Dapre), Laura Sarabia, will also be present today in El Plateado, located in the Micay region, in the troubled department of Cauca. Who is Petro’s right hand man?. The officials’ visit was announced last night by Petro, who said he would go to El Plateado “with the entire cabinet for all the inhabitants of Micay to draw up the immediate investment plan“.
The officials, noted the Ministry of Defense in its X account, travel to this town “to bring the entire institutional offer of the State to the communities of the district (town)”. “This is possible thanks to Operation Perseo, developed by the Public Force, to recover territorial control of El Plateado”added that portfolio on their social networks.
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Operation Perseus For this operation, the Ministry of Defense detailed, the military is using “special units, aircraft and artillery capabilities” as tanks to confront, mainly, the Carlos Patiño group, which is part of a belligerent faction of the Central General Staff (EMC), the largest dissident of the FARC. “By order of the president of the republic and after more than five years of control over El Plateado by the EMC, which turned the region into an international cocaine exchange, the Army of the country, from Bolívar, Nariño and Santander, enters the plateau ( sic).Today the Silver Plated is Colombia”, stated the Colombian president Gustavo Petro in his X account.
Likewise, the authorities published seven bosses wanted posters of the Carlos Patiño group, including its top boss, Anderson Andrey Vargas Suns, alias ‘Kevin’. In that sense, they have managed to arrest two alleged members of Carlos Patiño, as well as seize “rifles, ammunition and explosive devices”. According to the Army, several dissidents have also died in this operation.
In total There are more than 1,400 soldiers who have arrived in the area since yesterday with the aim of guaranteeing the safety of the more than 8,000 people who live in El Plateado, which for several years has been one of the strongholds of the EMC faction led by alias ‘Iván Mordisco’ and which It is not in peace negotiations with the Government. El Plateado is in the Micay Canyon area, key for drug trafficking because it is a step on the drug route that leaves Colombia through the Pacific.
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For this reason, its inhabitants live in constant anxiety due to the attacks committed by this armed group and due to clashes with the Army. In response to the ‘Operation Perseus‘, the dissidents launched drones with explosives against the village, an attack that left more than a dozen wounded among the troops and civilians. Faced with that attack, Petro ordered the bombing of that faction of the EMC, of which he said that “By bombing the civilian population, it forces us, by the principle of proportionality, to bomb their forces.“.
EFE
