Bogotá, Colombia, 11 February (H.S.): Colombian President Gustavo Petro electrified the nation on Tuesday, by disclosing a narrow escape from an assassination bid the previous evening, divulging during a live-broadcast cabinet session that his helicopter aborted a Caribbean coast landing amid credible threats of sniper fire from unnamed assailants.

Petro recounted diverting the aircraft to open sea for four perilous hours, ultimately alighting at an unscheduled locale to elude the peril, framing the episode as a direct reprisal from a narco-trafficking syndicate that has shadowed his tenure since inauguration on August 7, 2022—Latin America's inaugural leftist presidency.

He implicated figures like Iván Mordisco, paramount commander of the EMC dissident faction splintered from FARC post-2016 peace accord, in a cabal fusing drug lords and warlords bent on his demise.

This latest allegation compounds Petro's 2024 assassination claim and unfolds against Colombia's entrenched strife, where leftist luminaries—including presidential aspirants—have fallen to violence across decades amid guerrilla-paramilitary-cartel entanglements, exacerbated now by presidential polls looming months hence.

Constitutionally precluded from reelection, Petro's revelations coincide with U.S. diplomatic overtures, including a prospective White House summit with President Trump amid bilateral frictions over extraditions and narcotics interdiction.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar