Four of its members Clan del Golfoof the strongest drug trafficking cartel in Colombiawere killed last week in the first airstrike ordered by the Colombian president Gustavo Petro against the specific criminal organization, the head of state himself announced.

“The army’s operation in the village of Behukiyo” in the prefecture of Antioquia, “left four members of the cartel dead” while “eight rifles” were seized, President Petros summarized via X.

This is the first bombardment of the armed forces against this gang during the days of the government of the social democrat Mr. Petros, who was elected in the summer of 2022 and is the first president in the country’s history who belongs to the left.

“The Clan tried with alliances, political and economic, to create armed units with greater capacity” in the region, but military operations “shattered” that plan, Mr. Peter.

In Colombia’s nearly sixty years of civil armed conflict, aerial bombardments have generally been used by various governments against far-left rebels, particularly the FARC, a Marxist organization that has now disarmed, disbanded and transformed into a political party under the peace accord signed in 2016.

The province of Antioquia, in northwestern Colombia, is one of the main strongholds of the Clan del Golfo. The gang controls drug-trafficking roads there, as well as illegal gold mines, while also engaging in human trafficking, facilitating illegal immigration to diversify its sources of income, according to authorities.

During the same operation, four military personnel were killed by accident while descending with ropes from a helicopter, President Petros recalled, something the army had already announced.

The former leader of Clan del Golfo, known as Othoniel, was arrested in October 2022 and extradited to the US.

President Petros was in favor of starting negotiations that would lead to the dissolution of this gang, a reincarnation of the far-right paramilitary organizations that had reached the zenith of their power in the civil war in the years 1990 and 2000. But the contacts made with the young leaders so far have gotten nowhere.

In early 2023, the president unilaterally declared a ceasefire with this cartel. But the truce collapsed just three months later. In mid-November, the government named about two dozen former paramilitary leaders, among the most feared, “mediators” to help move the peace process forward.