Two Colombian soldiers were captured by the country’s last recognized guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), local sources said.
The news comes with the ELN on the verge of restarting peace talks with the government that have been suspended since the Guevarist movement claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a police academy in 2019 that left 22 people dead.
The ELN said in a statement on Thursday it had captured two soldiers in the northeastern Arauca department, close to the Venezuelan border and would “treat them according to war conditions.”
The army condemned the kidnapping, saying its soldiers “were traveling as civilians without the ability to defend themselves” aboard a bus when it was intercepted by the rebels.
The ELN was due in the coming weeks to begin peace negotiations with the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro.
The president, currently on official work in Partis, said on Thursday that he had already received the ELN’s list of negotiators.
Himself a former urban guerrilla, Petro is Colombia’s first ever left-wing president and assumed office in August.
He has vowed to bring about “total peace” following almost six decades of armed conflict and to do so has proposed dialogue with armed groups including radical leftist rebels and drug-traffickers.
His conservative predecessor Ivan Duque had taken a much tougher approach to armed groups.
At the end of September, dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the former rebels that signed a peace deal with the state in 2016, announced they were suspending attacks on the armed forces in order to facilitate a bilateral ceasefire.
Authorities believe the ELN has around 2,500 members.
