Four minors were killed in bombing raids conducted by Colombia’s new right-wing government against the country’s cocaine-trafficking guerrillas, a source from the forensics authority told AFP on Monday. The deaths come as newly appointed hardline President Abelardo de la Espriella ramps up military operations that have killed 26 suspected rebels so far. Two minors aged 15 and two more aged 16 died in the attacks that took place in the southern Guaviare department and in the northeastern Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela. Last week’s airstrike in Guaviare was the deadliest since De la Espriella took power earlier this month, vowing to flush out drug traffickers with military support from Washington. “The bandits who for decades have recruited minors to turn them into combatants or human shields must pay for these crimes that violate International Humanitarian Law,” the U.S.-backed millionaire wrote on X. Ten people were killed in total in the Aug. 27 operation, the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said in a statement Sunday night. Those killed allegedly belonged to a dissident faction of FARC, the defunct rebel army that laid down arms in 2016. De la Espriella on Monday reported another bombing in Guaviare against another FARC dissident group led by Colombia’s most-wanted guerrilla, who goes by the alias Ivan Mordisco. Eight members of Mordisco’s group were killed, according to the president. It remains unknown if any of the victims were minors. Colombia’s new leader, a staunch ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, expressed “full support” for the operations against what he called “narco-terrorist” groups. He fired the opening salvo in his crackdown on Aug. 9, on his first weekend in office. The military killed six alleged members of different armed groups, a day after two bombing attacks targeting security forces in different parts of the country that killed at least one police officer. A decade after the landmark 2016 peace accords, pockets of Colombia are still ruled by dissident armed groups that dominate global cocaine production. Rights groups warn that children and teens are increasingly being recruited by these groups through slick social media campaigns. Colombia’s ombudsman reported 428 cases of child recruitment by armed groups last year. Human Rights Watch in a report last week said that, in some cases, children were being used as “cannon fodder.”
