Colombia’s would-be presidential contender Miguel Uribe shot, wounded | Politics News

Senator’s wife says “she is fighting for her life” after receiving a shot at a campaign event in Bogotá.

The Colombian senator Miguel Uribe, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential elections next year, has been shot and injured in the capital of the country, Bogotá, according to the authorities.

The 39 -year -old senator, who was shot on Saturday during a campaign event as part of his career for the presumed in 2026, is now “fighting for his life,” said his wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, in X.

Uribe is a member of the Party of the Conservative Democratic Center of the opposition, founded by the former Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe.

The two men are not related.

The Democratic Center party issued a statement by calling the shooting “an act of implosible violence.”

He said the senator was organizing a campaign event in a public park in the neighborhood of Fontibon in the capital when the “armed subjects” shot him from behind.

He described the attack as serious, but did not reveal more details about the condition of Uribe.

A medical report of the Santa Fe Foundation said that the senator was admitted in critical condition and underwent a “neurosurgical and peripheral vascular procedure.”

The videos on social networks showed a man, identified as Uribe, attended after the shooting. He seemed to be bleeding from his head.

The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia, which is investigating the shooting, said that the senator received two gunshot wounds in the attack, which wounded two others. The office statement said a 15 -year -old was arrested on the scene with a firearm.

The government said it is offering about $ 730,000 as a reward for information in the case.

The Presidency of Colombia issued a statement saying that the government “categorical and strong” rejected the violent attack and requested an exhaustive investigation into the events that took place.

The leftist president, Gustavo Petro, sympathized with the senator’s family in an X message, and said: “Respect life, that is the red line … My solidarity with the Uribe family and the Turobay family. I don’t know how to relieve their pain.”

In a speech on Saturday night, Petro said the investigation would focus on finding who had ordered the attack.

“For now, there is nothing more than hypothesis,” Petro said, he added that failures would also be analyzed in security protocols.

The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, said in a statement that the United States “condemns in the stronger terms possible the attempt of murder” of Uribe, blaming Petro’s “inflammatory rhetoric” for violence.

The reactions poured from around Latin America. Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that “there is no space or justification for violence in democracy.” And the Ecuadorian president, Daniel Novoa, said: “We condemn all forms of violence and intolerance.”

Both preside over solidarity to the senator’s family.

In Colombia, former President Uribe said that “they attacked the hope of the country, a great husband, father, son, brother, a great colleague.”

Uribe, who is not yet an official presidential candidate for his party, is a prominent family in Colombia.

His father was a businessman and union leader. His mother, the journalist Diana Turbay, was kidnapped in 1990 by an armed group under the command of the late leader of the Pablo Escobar poster.

She was killed during a rescue operation in 1991.

Colombia has packaged for decades in a conflict between the leftist rebels, the criminal groups descended from the right -wing paramilitaries and the government.