Colombia’s Deadliest Strike in Years Kills 20 Guerrillas, President Says, as August Toll Included Minors

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella said Monday that a dawn airstrike in the southern Guaviare department killed 20 fighters from the Central General Staff (EMC), the country’s largest FARC dissident group, in what several outlets are describing as the deadliest operation of its kind in recent years.

“We neutralised 20 narco-terrorists, captured five… and rescued two minors,” de la Espriella said in a video posted to X, adding that forces seized 26 rifles, four machine guns, three pistols and body armor, with ammunition still being counted at the time of his statement.

The strike targeted forces aligned with Iván Mordisco, Colombia’s most-wanted rebel and commander of the EMC — a group formed by fighters who rejected the FARC’s 2016 peace agreement with the Colombian government and has since become one of the country’s largest illegal armed organizations. Mordisco has been the target of repeated, unsuccessful operations by the past two Colombian administrations and has been erroneously declared dead more than once.

De la Espriella, who took office as a hardline, right-wing president and close ally of US President Donald Trump, has ended peace negotiations with several armed groups in favor of expanded military operations, including joint action with US forces. In mid-August his government authorized joint operations with Washington against the insurgents, and Colombia has since joined the Shield of the Americas coalition, a US-led anti-trafficking effort. Colombia’s Defense Minister, Jorge Mora, wrote following the strike that those who “take up arms against Colombians” would face the full force of the state.

The disputed toll from earlier strikes

Monday’s operation was the government’s third major air campaign against suspected guerrillas since August, and the two prior strikes have drawn scrutiny the latest one has not yet faced. According to sources within Colombia’s forensics authority, those earlier operations killed at least four minors — a detail that sits alongside the government’s own framing of the campaign as a strike against “narco-terrorists.”

The figures the government provides for these operations — how many killed, how many minors rescued versus how many killed — come from de la Espriella’s own statements and have not been independently verified at time of writing. That distinction matters: Colombia’s escalating air campaign is unfolding in territory where dissident groups operate alongside civilian communities, and past strikes in the country’s conflict have drawn criticism for civilian and minor casualties that emerged only after independent investigation.

Sources: France 24, AFP, Yahoo News, Voz.us, Colombia Reports