Colombia’s ELN rebels announce Christmas truce

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group announced a unilateral truce on Sunday, to last until Jan. 3, the first since the previous ceasefire broke down in August.

In a statement posted on X, the National Liberation Army said that it will halt attacks on the military as the nation celebrates Christmas and New Year’s.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro shared the truce announcement on his X account, with a message saying that “the end of war, is the nation’s goal for 2025.”

The group, known in Spanish as the ELN, was founded in the 1960s by university students, priests and union leaders inspired by the Cuban revolution.

It currently has 6,000 fighters in Colombia and Venezuela according to Ministry of Defense estimates, and finances itself through illegal mining, extortion rackets and the drug trade.

The ELN has increased its influence in some rural areas of Colombia by stepping into a power vacuum left by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after that group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016.

Two years ago, the ELN began to stage peace talks of its own with the Petro administration, which resulted in a ceasefire that began in August of last year.

But peace talks stalled due to disagreements over when the ELN would stop kidnapping and taxing civilians. ELN commanders were also angered by the government’s move to set up separate negotiations with an ELN offshoot in the southwest of the country.

The ceasefire broke down four months ago, and since then the ELN has stepped up its attacks on military targets and oil infrastructure along Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

The Petro administration has attempted to stage peace talks with several armed groups in rural pockets of the country, under a strategy known as total peace. ELN commanders have criticized the Petro administration for trying to cut deals with some of these groups, instead of persecuting them.

By MANUEL RUEDA