Colombia's leftist ELN rebels claimed responsibility on Monday for the bombing of a police academy in Bogota that killed 20 people as well as the attacker, and derailed peace talks being held in Havana. The attack, the National Liberation army said, was a reprisal after the government of Ivan Duque failed to respect a unilateral ceasefire declared by the rebels.
"The operation carried out against these installations and troops is lawful within the law of war, there were no non-combatant victims," the ELN said.
It added the academy was a military installation where cadets received training to become intelligence operatives and conduct military operations.
ELN said, Colombian troops bombed a camp on December 25, affecting a family of peasants who were nearby.
"It is then very disproportionate that, while the government is attacking us, we cannot respond in self-defense," the statement added.
The attack was a major setback to two years of peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) —first hosted by Ecuador and currently by Cuba — that failed to go beyond the exploratory stage before stalling when Duque took power in August 2018.
After the attack, President Duque announced that he was reinstating arrest warrants for 10 ELN members who are part of the group's delegation to the Cuba talks and said he was revoking "the resolution creating the conditions that allow their stay in that country." Thousands of people marched throughout Colombia on Sunday to condemn the car bombing, the deadliest attack with explosives in Bogota since 2003.
Protests were held in several cities around the country, with marchers in white waving Colombian flags and chanting slogans like "cowardly killers" and "life is sacred." The peace talks had been aimed at ending more than five decades of insurgency by the Marxist-inspired guerrillas. Since 2016, Colombia had been experiencing relative calm post the peace accord signed by then-president Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
With the landmark agreement turning the former rebels into a political party, the smaller National Liberation Army is considered the last active rebel group in the country.
