As Colombia’s Defense Minister, retired General Pedro Sánchez, addressed a security crisis in the southwest of the country following an attack by a defunct FARC dissident group on the population of Buenos Aires, a new front was opening in the north. On Thursday evening, the ELN guerrillas attacked the battalion of the municipality of Aguachica, in César. The explosives and gunfire left at least six soldiers dead and 31 injured, according to the Colombian army, which said the injured were transported to medical centers.
The attack was attributed to the Camilo Torres Front, the South American country’s last armed guerrilla group, and comes just after a series of attacks by the group as part of a 72-hour “national armed strike”, which began last Sunday morning and was expected to end in the early hours of Wednesday. Aguachica, a small livestock town located on the border between the Caribbean and Andean regions of Colombia, is a nerve center where the main road that connects Bogotá to the coast, as well as the road that climbs from the southern plains of Cesar to the town of Ocaña, intersects; and from there to Catatumbo, one of the strategic rearguards of the ELN.
Soldiers from Infantry Battalion No. 14, or Captain Antonio Ricaurte’s battalion, were surprised by the attacks because the ELN is not generally present there. In addition to rifles, the guerrillas reportedly used drones equipped to launch explosives. Although the troops responded with bursts of rifle fire, they could not prevent the large number of injuries or the serious damage caused to the infrastructure of the military installation, located about 15 kilometers south of the urban area, on the so-called Ruta del Sol. Professional soldiers Kevin Andres Méndez Torres, Juan David Pérez Vides, Mateo Pino Pulgarín, Jhon Fredy Moreno Sierra and Jaime Alejandro Cárdenas Ramírez died, as well as regular soldier Brandon Daniel Valderrama Martínez.
Army Commander Gen. Luis Emilio Cardozo confirmed via X that the preliminary report listed the deaths of four soldiers. “Our solidarity and total support to them and their families,” the officer wrote, while specifying that the army was securing the area. “This attack against those who protect Colombia will not go unpunished. Terrorism will not break the will of the soldiers of the Homeland,” he concluded.
So far, this month of December has been marked by the actions of the ELN, whose negotiations with the government of Gustavo Petro have been frozen since January 2025, after a bloody offensive in Catatumbo, a border region with Venezuela, which not only caused an unknown number of deaths but also the massive displacement of more than 50,000 people.
The attacks began on Candle Day, Sunday 7, when Christmas celebrations begin in Colombia. That morning, militiamen from this group carried out several simultaneous attacks in Cúcuta, the capital of Norte de Santander, which includes the Catatumbo region. There, they blew up at least three electricity pylons, attacked a police station in the neighboring municipality of Villa del Rosario and fired on a police patrol, causing the death of two uniformed police officers. The explosive wave hit the car in which gymnast and Olympic medalist Jossimar Calvo and his wife were traveling. The vehicle was destroyed, but they were not seriously injured.
A few days later, on Friday the 12th, they announced their “national armed strike”, under the pretext of protesting against the threats of imperialist intervention in Colombia from the government of Donald Trump, “which intends to dig its claws even deeper into the territories of Latin America and the Caribbean”, according to the text. The press release calls on the civilian population not to travel “on navigable roads and rivers” and not to mix with the military to avoid accidents.
In the last 72 hours, the ELN has committed all types of crimes: it murdered the driver of an ambulance in Puerto Santander, it incinerated an intercommunal bus in Valdivia (Antioquia), it destroyed a toll booth on the Bucaramanga-Barrancabermeja highway. And, in the early hours of this Tuesday, explosives exploded in Cali as two police officers were patrolling near the María Isabel Urrutia Coliseum. The men in uniform are dead. “The armed group remains determined to keep the country in the midst of fear and anxiety,” concluded the People’s Ombudsman, Iris Marín, after the attack in Aguachica.
Editor’s note: This information was updated on Friday, December 19 at 9:30 a.m. with the most recent data on those killed and injured in the attack.
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