Bomb attack leaves two police officers dead in Cali

An explosion early Tuesday morning has left two police officers dead in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city. The blast occurred at 3:50 a.m. while Jorge Leonardo Gómez and Robert Steven Melo were patrolling the area around the María Isabel Urrutia Coliseum, a sports complex in the south of the city where Cali residents begin arriving around 4 a.m. to play sports. Regional police director Henry Bello has blamed the National Liberation Army (ELN), which is carrying out a “national armed strike” in which it has perpetrated attacks in various parts of the country. “The explosive devices [there was another detonation a few minutes later] correspond to the criminal profile used by the National Liberation Army,” the general told the media at the site of the attack in the Mariano Ramos neighborhood. He later clarified that further investigation is still needed: “We have assembled a team of 20 officials with all the necessary capabilities to carry out these urgent actions and establish the identity of those responsible.” The ELN is on its last day of its “national armed strike,” as it calls a series of attacks aimed at intimidating the military and the civilian population. Since Sunday, when the offensive began, armed groups have committed all kinds of crimes: they murdered an ambulance driver in Puerto Santander, in the northeast of the country; they burned an intercity bus in Valdivia (Antioquia), in the northwest; they harassed a police station in Buenos Aires (Cauca), in the southwest, with bursts of gunfire. Although the guerrillas claim that their actions are directed at the security forces, the civilian population is affected by intimidation, confinement, and crossfire. If their involvement in the attack in Cali is confirmed, the list of victims of the “strike” would include the first deaths among the security forces. The mayor of Cali, Alejandro Eder, has been cautious in referring to those responsible. “We are still evaluating [the identity of the armed group],” he told the media. “We are in the midst of an armed strike announcement, which is nothing less than a wave of terrorism,” he said, referring to the ELN, Colombia's last remaining armed guerrilla group. On the other hand, he hinted that he suspects FARC dissidents, recalling the savage attacks carried out by the Central General Staff (EMC) at the beginning of the year, when it attacked, among other targets, the city's air base: “The modus operandi is very similar to the attacks in April and May, so we need to look into the matter.” Tuesday's attack increases concern about the growing violence of armed groups in cities. “This is a tragedy. We have had five terrorist attacks [in Cali] this year, and 12 people have been killed,” said Eder. "We need more security forces, and the government needs to get its act together and start eradicating the coca crops in the upper part of Jamundí [a municipality south of the city] and in northern Cauca. It's happening all over the country, but Cali is surrounded by coca and illegal economies," he added, referring to the armed groups operating in the surrounding area. The situation in Cali is not an isolated incident: in November, authorities defused a truck bomb in Tunja, a city of about 200,000 inhabitants in the Andean center of the country. The mayors of Colombia's two other major cities, Bogotá and Medellín, have expressed their solidarity with their Cali counterpart and called for more forceful action by the national government against armed groups. “This is yet another example of the failure of total peace and the need to make changes now to ensure security in cities and throughout the country,” said the mayor of the capital, Carlos Fernando Galán. His counterpart in Antioquia, Federico Gutiérrez, made a similar comment: “The only result of the failed ‘total peace’ is the strengthening of criminal structures .. The next president must immediately end the benefits that the current government has given to criminal structures.”