Minister Pedro Sánchez supported the operation in Guaviare and assured that the minors were used by dissidents.
The Minister of Defense, Pedro Sánchez, defended the bombing against FARC dissidents in Guaviare, in which seven minors died. He claimed they were part of a “lethal threat” and singled out armed groups for exposing them to the conflict.
The Minister of Defense, Pedro Sánchez, defended the bombing this Saturday that the Military Forces carried out on November 12 in Guaviare, against dissident structures of the FARC under the command of Néstor Gregorio Vera, alias ‘Iván Mordisco’.
The operation caused the death of seven minors. The Ombudsman’s Office drew attention to six, and Legal Medicine, As he progresses in the identification of the twenty bodies left by the attack, he added another number.
Sánchez described as “a lethal threat” the group that the public force attacked in the village of Itilla, the municipality of Calamar, a jungle area of Guaviare, and corroborated the figure of up to 150 dissidents that President Gustavo Petro had anticipated.
“In the face of a lethal threat, which was more than a hundred and could reach 150 or more, and which was at a very close distance from the military,” explained the minister“the president authorized close air support” that would employ “even bombings.”
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The operation caused twenty deaths, and “unfortunately” seven were “adolescents.” “They are not children,” Sánchez said in front of several mayors at the National Capital Cities Security Meeting, a forum convened by Asocapitales.
“If that decision had not been made, we would be mourning the death, the murder, of our military, police, and civilian population”added the portfolio manager, who had remained silent about the news until his intervention at the event.
The Ministry of Defense later issued a statement with its official position. “If it had not been for the quick and timely intervention, today perhaps the entire country – and the families of these brave soldiers – would be regretting a terrorist attack,” he insisted.
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For the security portfolio, the responsibility of “exposing” minors to hostilities “falls solely and exclusively on the illegal armed groups that recruit, use and force them to perform combat roles in open violation of IHL”.
Source: Integrated Information System
