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Colombian President Gustavo Petro delivers a speech during a police ceremony in Bogota, Colombia, December 15, 2025
COLOMBIAN police said on Tuesday that two officers had been killed in the south-western city of Cali in an attack by the National Liberation Army, in what the group says is an effort to show its opposition to the United States military build-up in the Caribbean.
Police said that the officers were patrolling a neighbourhood on motorcycles when they were killed by a roadside bomb.
The National Liberation Army, also known by its Spanish acronym ELN, launched a 72-hour “armed strike” on Sunday to protest against the US military build-up in the Caribbean.
During these armed strikes, schools and businesses are forced to close in areas under the group’s control, while the rebels step up attacks against government targets.
The ELN has not claimed responsibility for the attack in Cali.
Iris Marin, Colombia’s human rights ombudswoman, said on Monday that the group had attacked a police station and a military base over the weekend, as it launched its armed strike.
Those attacks took place in provinces along Colombia’s border with Venezuela and left an ambulance driver dead.
On Tuesday, authorities in Buenos Aires, a town located 37 miles south of Cali, said that the local police station was attacked with rockets fired by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army, a militia group that also blocked roads leading into the town.
Videos shared on social media showed that homes and government offices in the town were seriously damaged in the attack.
Colombia’s government has been critical of US President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to pressure Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro, including the deployment of US warships, and fighter jets to areas near Venezuela’s coast.
Last week, Colombian President Gustavo Petro described the Trump administration’s seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as an act of “piracy.”
But Colombian officials also said on Monday that the ELN’s protest against US intervention “lacks any sense whatsoever” because it is targeting rural and urban communities in Colombia.
