To shouts of “liar” and “get out,” President Santos was loudly jeered and booed by dozens of spectators at a 10-kilometer run April 19 in Bogota to benefit soldiers wounded in combat. The frenzied scene repeated itself when he visited Medellin the next day.
The outrage was sparked by the April 15 attack by the FARC’s Miller Perdomo Mobile Column in which the FARC brutally killed eleven soldiers and wounded a dozen others, who were part of a military patrol in the south-western province of Cauca. The FARC used grenades, explosives and firearms. FARC Commander alias Pastor Alape, a negotiator in Havana, said the army casualties occurred in a “defensive action.” Meanwhile, President Santos called the attack “deliberate” and ordered the armed forces to resume bombing FARC camps.
So it is that the fabric of the peace talks in Havana is disintegrating, even more so as facts are made explicit.