Colombian president alleges plot to down his plane with missiles

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro claimed Monday to have been the target of a plot to down his plane with missiles by "big mafias" irate at his government's attempts to hunt them down.

"They want to shoot a missile at my plane... not one, but two missiles. We know who they are," the South American country's first-ever leftist president told a police ceremony in Bogota.

He added the missiles had been bought by "drug traffickers."

"Why do they want to take me down quickly? Because they know we are after the big mafias of Colombia," added Petro, listing the ELN guerrilla group among them.

The statement came as Petro faces plummeting public approval and has asked his cabinet to resign on the grounds they were ineffective. Several ministers have since been replaced.

Petro was elected in 2022 on promises of bringing "total peace" to a country battling to extricate itself from six decades of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug cartels and the government.

Peace talks with armed groups have broken down several times.

The ELN this week announced an "armed strike" in the conflict-riddled northwestern Choco department, confining the movement of civilians, shuttering schools, and halting public transport in a show of force that prompted local authorities to plead for intervention from the national government.

The ELN is at war with the Gulf Clan narco group in Choco, where about 3,500 people have been displaced, according to observers.

In Catatumbo near the border with Venezuela, the ELN fights against dissidents of the ex-FARC guerrilla army that mostly disarmed under a 2016 peace deal.

Clashes in Catatumbo since January have killed 63 people, many of them civilians, and displaced more than 50,000.

The fighting prompted Petro to suspend talks with the ELN, which has taken part in failed negotiations with Colombia's last five governments.

The president on Tuesday also accused FARC dissidents who call themselves the Central General Staff (EMC) of having launched an attack with explosive drones on a tented hospital in Micay in the country's rural southeast.

No one was killed and there were no serious injuries.

"The EMC narcos in Cauca do not want healthcare for the people of Micay. They attacked a hospital with drones, which constitutes a violation of International Humanitarian Law," Petro wrote on X.

© Agence France-Presse