COLOMBIAN President Gustavo Petro suspended a ceasefire with one of a handful of armed groups on Sunday, accusing its fighters of breaking the truce by attacking an indigenous community.

The government said that starting tomorrow it would resume military operations against Estado Mayor Central, a group of fighters who broke away from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia when it signed a peace pact in 2016.

Indigenous leaders in the war-torn western region of Cauca said an attack by the dissident group Saturday wounded at least three people and a young student was taken away by force.

In a post on the X social media platform, President Petro said the group was “violating the ceasefire agreement,” adding that he believed it used peace negotiations as a cover to “strengthen itself militarily.”

President Petro, a former rebel who became Colombia’s first left-wing leader, has sought to rewire the way the country grapples with its decades of conflict, by addressing the poverty that underlies the unrest while simultaneously negotiating peace with armed groups to minimise bloodshed. 

But conflict continues to rage in many rural swathes of Colombia.

A report by a United Nations agency warned last Friday that more than eight million people in Colombia need humanitarian help, mainly because of the expansion of the country’s armed conflict.