Colombian Military Forces carried out another attack against alleged facilities of Ivan Mordisco’s dissidents in the Amazonas department on October 1. Although military intelligence later assured that they had opened fire because they had identified Mordisco’s presence, they later reported that the commander of the illegal group had fled. Instead, they reported that four people were captured and four others were “killed.” However, subsequent reports from a foundation that legally accompanies the families of the dead indicate that they were all minors. Furthermore, one of the minors injured in the operation is Luis Carlos Abarca Vilches, 10 years old.
The Charitable and Legal Foundation for Peace accompanied the families of the bombed minors in the area known as Three Islands, between the municipalities of Puerto Santander and Mirití Paraná. “The evidence collected and the community’s testimonies indicate that the operations did not take place where they were officially reported, and that among the victims there were civilian minors,” reads a statement from the foundation. At the time, when the Ministry of Defense reported that the operation was successful, he assured the newspaper The time which “was framed according to the principles of international humanitarian law and human rights”.
The foundation’s first public complaint about the murder of constitutionally protected minors came 10 days later, on October 11. One of the first names known was that of Javier Alcides Abarca Vilches, 15 years old. His younger brother, Luis Carlos Abarca Vilches, 10, was injured and survived the attack. The organization’s documents also include Vanessa Martínez Caicedo, 12 years old; Endy Taminuca Leutama, also 12 years old, and Ronald Stiven Macuna Taninuca, 15 years old.
According to a military source, The time At the time “among the men killed there were members of Ivan Mordisco’s security network”. That is, there were children between the ages of 10 and 15 in the supposed safety net. The names or aliases were not published by the Ministry of Defense as is usually the case. Faced with media pressure for possible violations of international humanitarian rights, according to which the presence of children and adolescents cannot open fire in the midst of a war, President Gustavo Petro published a tweet through his X account in which he acknowledged that minors had been victims of forced recruitment. “All of them are victims of forced recruitment by criminals who brought them into hostilities and deprived them of protection.”
Reports of this attack, which did not receive much media coverage at the time, occurred a month before a more recent operation. On November 10, 2025, the Military Forces, on direct orders from the president, carried out a bombing in the municipality of Calamar, Guaviare, against another camp linked to FARC dissidents commanded by Ivan Mordisco. According to the Ministry of Defence, the action was also conducted against IHL, while recognizing that among the victims there were minors. In total, 19 people died, including seven minors, according to what was found by the Forensic Medicine and the Office of the Ombudsman.
EL PAÍS revealed the identity, subject to authorization from their families, of five of the seven minors affected by the attack: Dani Santiago Leyton Cuéllar (15 years old), born in the municipality of Fortul (Arauca). Deini Lorena Beltrán Mendoza (16 years old), born in Tibú, Norte de Santander. Maicol Andrés Pérez Ávila (16 years old), originally from Miraflores (Guaviare) and Martha Elena Abarca Vilches (17 years old), from Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo.
The two operations, separated by just a month and with minors identified among the victims in both cases, have once again put at the center the main obligation of the State in war scenarios: to ensure that no armed action is carried out in areas where children and adolescents are present. With a Government that has defended itself without violating human rights, the Government’s political contradictions will be exposed this week in the legislature, where a first motion of censure against Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez has already been proposed.
