Colombia’s armed forces launched a pre-dawn airstrike on Thursday against camps used by a dissident faction of the former FARC guerrilla group in rural El Retorno, in the southern department of Guaviare (about 250 miles south of Bogotá). It was the second such bombing carried out by President Abelardo De La Espriella’s government and the first led by the newly appointed military and police command.
Dubbed Operation AMÓN, the strike hit camps belonging to the “Jorge Suárez Briceño” bloc, a faction commanded by alias “Calarcá.” According to sources consulted by El Tiempo, military intelligence had spent days tracking clashes between Calarcá’s fighters and a rival faction led by alias “Iván Mordisco.” That infighting concentrated troops in a small area, allowing authorities to pinpoint their exact positions before striking.
Five Kfir jets and six A-29 Super Tucano aircraft carried out the aerial assault, clearing the way for ground commandos to secure the site. The government’s preliminary count reported eight dead fighters along with seized rifles, machine guns and supplies, though El Tiempo learned the actual toll was 11 dead and two captured. Sources said one of those killed may have been Juan Antonio Agudelo Salazar, alias “Urias Perdono,” a Calarcá operative with a bounty of up to 400 million pesos (roughly $100,000).
Read the full report at El Tiempo.