| "Whoops! Sorry! Our bad!" |
A leftist rebel group acknowledged Saturday that its fighters killed two Catholic priests earlier this week, but said the killing was a mistake and promised to punish those responsible. The two priests, Vicente Rosso Bayona and Jesus Emilio Mora, were killed Monday along with two construction workers when gunmen ambushed their car on a remote country road in northeast Colombia. A third priest was killed in a separate incident on Thursday. "We are aware of the irreparable damage that this act has caused," the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish acronym ELN, said in a statement. "We regret it deeply and ask for forgiveness."
Guerrilla fighters were conducting operations against their far-right paramilitary rivals near Teorama, 260 miles northeast of the capital, Bogota, when the shooting took place, the group said. In the statement, the ELN's Central Command blamed the killings on an "operational error" and said those responsible would be "tried with full rigor." |