Colombia arrests more than 200 alleged cartel members accused of paying the recruits $ 3,500 for

The Colombian authorities said Monday that they had captured more than 200 members of the largest drug poster in the country, who is accused of killing two dozen members of the security force in the last month.

He Gulf clan He was born from the right -wing paramilitary groups that fought against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s before directing their attention to cocaine trade.

President Gustavo Petro accused the group, with which he suspended peace conversations in early 2023, to design a strategy to “systematically assassinate” the members of the security forces.

The head of the Armed Forces, Franciso Cubides, said a press conference on Monday that the security forces had responded by arrested 217 members of the Clan since April 15.

He added that another 15 alleged drug traffickers had been shot dead in raids that had scored 6.8 tons of drugs, 123 firearms and more than 15,000 rounds of ammunition.

Sixteen police and five soldiers have been killed in attacks attacked to what Petro has called the “gun plan” of the Gulf clan.

Cubides said the attacks were part of a “desperate response” of armed groups to the “overwhelming” setbacks that suffered at the hands of the police and the army in the north and west of the country.

The poster paid its members “between 10 and 15 million (Colombian pesos, between $ 2,300 and 3,500) for some dead police officers,” said Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, to a weekly meeting of the government cabinet.

According to government estimates, it is believed that the Gulf clan, which is involved in illegal gold mining, extortion and smuggling of migrants, add up to 7,500 members, according to government estimates. The “main source of revenue of the group is cocaine traffic, which uses to finance its paramilitary activities,” according to the United States Department of State.

Last month, the police and the DEA killed a man named “Chirimoya”, One of the five cartel commandersas well as eight other members of the group.

The Gulf Clan is one of the various posters recently designated as foreign terrorist groups by the United States. In 2022, the Gulf clan closed dozens of cities in northern Colombia for four days in reaction to its leader. extradited to the United States for trial.

The arrests occur when Colombia suffers its worst burst of violence since the Guerrillas of FARC leftist, one of the world’s oldest rebel movements, signed a peace agreement with the Government in 2016.

Benedetti admitted last month that Petro’s strategy to pursue “total peace” by participating in the dialogue with the various armed groups of the country had not given fruit.

In Petro’s surveillance, several armed groups, particularly the Gulf clan, have been strengthened, Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez, recently admitted in an News interview.

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