Drone attacks raise fears as Colombians vote to elect a new president

JAMUNDI, Colombia, May 25, (AP): Gladys Marín only has to cross the street to reach a school where polling stations will open Sunday in her small town in Colombia. But she's still not sure she'll make the short walk, because fears for her safety could outweigh the chance to vote for the country’s next president. Her home in the southwestern village of Potrerito sits less than 100 meters (320 feet) from the police station, which has become a frequent target for drone-dropped explosives.

Authorities blame the attacks on a rebel faction that rejected a peace agreement signed a decade ago with the Colombian government. "You have to stay alert to what is happening, because we live very close to the police station,” Marín said from her porch in this town about 470 kilometers from the capital, Bogotá.

Colombia will elect a new president and vice president on May 31 in what has been cast as a referendum on President Gustavo Petro’s policies, most notably his controversial "total peace” initiative to negotiate with the country’s remaining rebel groups. By most accounts, violence tied to armed groups has worsened under Petro's watch.

According to Colombia's Electoral Observation Mission, 386 municipalities, or about a third of the country, are vulnerable to violence from illegal armed groups, and data from the Ideas for Peace Foundation think tank indicates that roughly 27,000 people remain under arms nationwide. In Robles, a neighboring town in the Jamundi municipality, the streets leading to the police station are blocked by improvised barricades.

The police are entrenched in sentry posts, using shelters made of sandbags and black fabric to scan the sky for any approaching drones. "You pass by the police station with this sense of dread, looking up, hoping you won’t run into a nasty surprise,” said Eucaris Zamora, who had to vacate her home after a cylinder bomb struck it in October, leaving the building partially destroyed.

Guillermo Londoño, a security official in the region of Valle del Cauca, where Jamundi is located, said illegal armed groups in the area have sought to maximize damage through simultaneous, "swarm-style” drone strikes, marking a shift from previous tactics, where attackers would launch attacks with a single drone, reload it, and then resume their assault.