Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro speaks throughout a press convention flanked by Colombia’s Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez, left, and Colombia’s Armed Forces Commander, Gen. Helder Giraldo, on the Narino Presidential Palace in Bogota, Colombia, on Tuesday.
Fernando Vergara/AP
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Fernando Vergara/AP
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro speaks throughout a press convention flanked by Colombia’s Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez, left, and Colombia’s Armed Forces Commander, Gen. Helder Giraldo, on the Narino Presidential Palace in Bogota, Colombia, on Tuesday.
Fernando Vergara/AP
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian President Gustavo Petro mentioned Tuesday that tons of of hundreds of items of ammunition have gone missing from two army bases within the South American nation.
In a quick assertion, Petro mentioned that an inspection this month by the army discovered that tons of of hundreds of bullets, hundreds of grenades and 37 anti-tank missiles have been stolen from a army base within the middle of the nation and one other close to the Caribbean coast.
Petro, the nation’s first left-wing president, mentioned the ammunition may need ended up within the palms of Colombian insurgent teams, or might have been offered illegally to prison teams abroad, together with Haitian gangs.
“The only way to explain these missing items is that there are networks made up of people within the armed forces who are involved in the illegal arms trade,” Petro mentioned.
Petro mentioned that inspections of army bases would proceed in an effort to “separate the armed forces from any type of criminal organization.”
The investigation comes as Colombia resumes preventing within the southwest of the nation towards the FARC-EMC a insurgent group that broke off from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after it signed a peace take care of the federal government in 2016.
Petro has launched peace talks with a few of the nation’s remaining insurgent teams since he was elected into workplace in 2022. But whereas in some areas of the nation preventing between the federal government and insurgent teams has decreased, critics of the Petro administration have mentioned that these teams proceed to extort and kidnap civilians. They say that cease-fires linked to the peace talks have helped rebels strengthen their positions and acquire extra affect over communities.