Colombia’s FARC rebels suspend ceasefire over air strike

Colombia’s FARC guerrillas suspended their unilateral ceasefire Friday after a government air strike killed 26 rebels, plunging peace talks to end the five-decade conflict into a new crisis. The December ceasefire announcement by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had raised hopes that the two-year-old peace negotiations were approaching a breakthrough. But tensions have spiralled since the rebels killed 11 soldiers in an ambush last month. On April 15, the day after the ambush, a furious President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the military to resume air strikes against the FARC, which he had suspended on March 11 in recognition of their ceasefire. Thursday night’s air strike and ground attack was the deadliest assault on the FARC since that announcement.

We didn’t plan to suspend the ceasefire… but the incoherence of the Santos administration has achieved it, after five months of ground and air offensives against our units across the country.

the rebel negotiating team

The strike came on the same day the government and FARC opened a new round of peace talks, seeking to make progress on ending a five-decade conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people. The FARC, which has defended the April ambush as a “defensive” action taken against an army siege, vehemently condemned the air strike.

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