President Gustavo Petro ordered an investigation into the attack on Miguel Uribe, which authorities said was carried out by a minor under 15 years of age.
A presidential contender, Uribe, 39, was fighting for his life in the hospital on Sunday.
President Gustavo Petro ordered an investigation into the attack, which was carried out by a “minor under 15 years of age” who was “arrested for carrying a Glock pistol-type firearm, the Colombian attorney general’s office said in a statement. The office said Uribe was shot twice and two others were also wounded.
Uribe, who is a part of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party, was shot in the Fontibon neighborhood in the capital during a 2026 presidential campaign event, a party statement on the attack said.
“Armed subjects shot him from behind,” the party said, which described the shooting as serious.
The hospital treating Uribe issued a medical report saying that he had been admitted in critical condition and was undergoing a “neurosurgical and peripheral vascular procedure.”
In various videos on social media, Uribe can be seen bleeding from his head while being tended to after the shooting.
He was “fighting for this life,” Uribe’s wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, wrote on her husband’s social media X account.
At the Santa Fe Foundation Hospital where the senator is being treated, people gathered to pray and stage candlelight vigils, some carrying the nation’s flag.
A suspect has been arrested in connection with the shooting, and authorities are investigating if others could have been involved, Colombia’s Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said. He added that he had visited Uribe in the hospital.
The Colombian government is offering a roughly $730,000 reward to anyone with information on the shooting.
The government “categorically and forcefully” condemned the violent attack and is pushing for a complete investigation, Colombia’s presidency said in a statement.
In a post on X, Petro told the senator’s family that he doesn’t “know how to ease your pain. It is the pain of a mother lost, and of a homeland.”
Later on Saturday night, Petro said the suspect arrested was a minor and that a probe into the attack would focus on who had ordered it.
“For now there is nothing more than hypothesis,” he said during a speech. Any security protocols that failed would also be investigated, he added.
Petro vowed to have “complete transparency” in the investigation and to determine if any of the senator’s bodyguards had failed to protect Uribe.
In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination” of Uribe. He said Petro’s “inflammatory rhetoric” was responsible for the attack.
Coming from a major family in Colombia, Uribe was not yet an official presidential candidate for the Democratic Center party. His family included a businessman and union leader father, and his mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed during a rescue operation in 1991 after she was kidnapped a year prior by an armed group.
That group was sent by the late cartel kingpin, Pablo Escobar.
Conflict has endured in Colombia for decades between the government, criminal groups, and various political rebels.
According to Colombian police chief Gen. Carlos Triana, Uribe was being accompanied by Councilman Andrés Barrios and 20 others at the time of the shooting. The minor who was arrested is being treated for a leg injury, he added.
“I have ordered the Colombian military and police forces and intelligence agencies to deploy all their capabilities to urgently clarify the facts,” Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/potential-presidential-contender-and-colombian-senator-uribe-fights-for-his-life-following-shooting-5869638?ea_src=ca-frontpage&ea_cnt=b&ea_med=lead-story-0
