Popayan, Colombia, Sep 4, 2019 / 16:29 pm
The secretary general of the Colombian bishops' conference has deplored the assassination of Karina García, a mayoral candidate in the country's southwest, and called for an end to the bloodshed in the country.
García, 31, was running for mayor of Suárez, in Cauca Department. She was killed in a Sept. 1 ambush along with her mother and four others.
Bishop Elkin Fernando Álvarez Botero, auxiliary bishop of Medellin, told ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish language sister agency, Sept. 3 that "as a Church we receive with profound sorrow this murder of one of the candidates for local office. We sent a message in the past few days with an appeal to avoid all forms of violence in the political campaigns, but this murder is a sign that we're returning to those ways of violence which do not allow us to move forward."
According to BBC World News Spanish edition, prosecutors indicated that the vehicle the victims were riding in was ambushed by another car crosswise in the middle of the road. Several men got out with high powered weapons, who fired on García and those accompanying her. They then pulled the bodies out of the vehicle and incinerated it.