7 police officers killed in ambush in Colombia

By Laura Gamba

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Seven police officers were killed in an attack Friday in southwestern Colombia.

The officers were killed in an ambush after the vehicle they were in after attending an event in the department of Huila hit a road mine.

Authorities initially reported that eight officers died but later police said one survived the attack.

President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack and said it was a "clear sabotage" of his plan to achieve "total peace."

"I strongly reject the explosive attack that killed 8 policemen in San Luis, Huila. Solidarity with their families,” he wrote on Twitter.

The attack was the deadliest on security forces in Colombia since the president was sworn Aug. 7.

Petro has said he will seek peace talks with National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and all criminal armed groups to end more than five decades of armed conflict.

After the government signed a peace agreement with the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) in 2016, a unit of dissidents said it would not lay down arms and continued fighting.

Other groups, including the ELN, drug trafficking gangs and the Gulf Clan have remained.

Peace talks with the ELN were interrupted by former President Ivan Duque in 2019 after the group carried out a bombing at a police academy in Bogota that killed 21 officers and injured 68 others.