Colombian military kills 7 children in strike on rebel forces

The incident has ignited a political firestorm for Petro, who promised to bring “Total Peace,” but has instead often relied on the military strategies of his predecessors

A military operation carried out by the Colombian military against the FARC dissident group EMC in Guaviare, Colombia, killed seven children, according to the country’s Defensoria.

In a press statement, the director of the state-prosecution’s forensic medicine institute, Ariel Cortes, said that it received the remains of four girls and three boys between the ages of 13 and 17 who were killed in the military attack.

Colombia’s Defensoria described the actions as “a violation of human rights and accepted international law.”

Under Colombian law, minors who are members of armed groups are considered victims of forced recruitment. Many join non-state armed groups out of desperation, or the promise of escaping poverty, and in some cases, are involuntarily press-ganged into service.

The killings have ignited a political firestorm for President Gustavo Petro, who described similar actions under other administrations as “war crimes.”

Petro defended the decision in public statements as criticism within the country mounted by claiming that the children were part of a group of “150 heavily armed men that could have killed 20 Colombian soldiers in their path.”

The president said that he decided to bomb the guerrilla group despite a lack of intelligence on whether minors and children were part of the group.

“In the jungles of Guaviare, far from any populated areas and with little intelligence, we had to preserve, above all else, the lives of soldiers exposed to lethal offensive action,” said Petro.

It is unclear why EMC fighters, which have decades of experience in guerrilla warfare, would be moving in the open in such a large group, or why Colombian officials didn’t simply evacuate the soldiers in their path.

The incident sparked outrage even among some of Petro’s supporters. Iván Cepeda, a leftist senator and the nominee for Petro’s political party in presidential elections next year, said that “actions of this nature are clearly prohibited by humanitarian law.”

He also condemned forced recruitment by Colombian armed groups.

Similar actions caused scandals for the administration of Iván Duque, Petro’s predecessor. In 2019, an air force operation that killed 8 children in the Caquetá region led to the resignation of then-Minister of Defense Guillermo Botero.

During the Duque administration, when Petro was an opposition senator, he was well-known for condemning human rights violations by the Colombian military.

In a 2021 comment that has been circulated widely in response to Petro’s decision to bomb minors, Petro condemned Duque for a similar strike, also in Guaviare.

“The bombing of children in Guaviare is a war crime. Those who planned it must resign immediately,” he wrote at the time.

After a series of setbacks in Petro’s attempts to bring “Total Peace” to Colombia through negotiations with armed criminal groups, the leftist leader has increasingly turned to the failed military strategies of his predecessors.

The military operation stands in sharp contrast to his rhetoric in recent weeks against US bombings of speedboats in the Caribbean, which have killed and injured Colombian citizens, as well as his statements on bombings in Israel, which he has often criticized for targeting children.

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