The capture of a leader of the Colombian guerrilla ELN this Sunday, November 4, was the trigger for the ambush suffered by officials of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) in the indigenous Picatonal community, a few minutes from Puerto Ayacucho, in the state Amazon.
In the morning of this Sunday the military had flown over the sector by helicopter and identified an irregular activity in the area, so they went on foot and arrested a few citizens who were transferred to Puerto Ayacucho. The commission would have returned to the place later and there they were attacked with firearms.
The attack left at least three GNB officials dead and 10 injured. Authorities of the entity made known that among the detainees by "the Selva Infantry Brigade" is the Colombian citizen Luis Felipe Ortega Bernal, reported the newspaper El Universal.
Ortega Bernal is designated as a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and had a Venezuelan identity card under the name of Gabriel Alfonso Ariza Suarez, said the journalist specializing in criminalistics, Javier Ignacio Mayorca.
Three other people were apprehended, including a woman. The group seized long weapons, short, grenades and cash, said the journalist of Amazonas, Carolina Azavache.
At 8:30 pm on this Sunday, neither the Public Ministry (MP) nor any high official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace or the Ministry of Defense had pronounced on this fact.
The guerrilla Luis Felipe Ortega Bernal belongs to the National Liberation Army (ELN), which is currently the only guerrilla that remains active in Colombia after the peace process and passes to the policy of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Ortega Bernal is nicknamed "Throat" and was the head of the Eastern Front of the ELN. Its activity in this guerrilla includes attack to members of the Colombian Army, the oil infrastructure of the neighboring country and even a homicide.
According to the newspaper El Tiempo de Bogotá, the detainee is the head of the commission 'Ernesto Che Guevara', who commits criminal acts in Colombia but uses the states of Apure and Amazonas as a hiding place.
The New Granada media highlights that in that country they accuse him of perpetrating a terrorist attack against the oil complex of Caño Limón, where there were 13 injured people in the village of La Osa, in Arauquita, on June 30, 2014.
He is also wanted for the murder of a driver in an attack with explosives against a caravan of contractors of Ecopetrol, on October 31, 2015. He is accused of terrorism, rebellion, kidnapping and has a blue circular from Interpol.
@chanchuy