BOGOTA: Colombian right-wing opposition senator and candidate to next year’s presidential election was in intensive care on Saturday after being shot during a campaign event in Bogota, authorities said.
A video circulating on social media shows 39-year-old Miguel Uribe giving a speech in front of several people when gunshots suddenly ring out.
In other images, he appears slumped against the hood of a white car, smeared with blood, as a group of men try to hold him up. Paramedics say that the presidential candidate was shot three times, including twice in the head.
Local media reported that a 15-year-old boy had been arrested and was suspected of pulling the trigger. Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo told Caracol Radio that Uribe was in “intensive care.”
Local media reported that at least one bullet struck the senator in the neck or head.
The government of leftist President Gustavo Petro said it “categorically and forcefully” condemned the attack on Uribe during the campaign event in the west of the capital.
“This act of violence is an attack not only against his person, but also against democracy, freedom of thought, and the legitimate exercise of politics in Colombia,” the presidency said in the statement.
Uribe, a strong critic of Petro, is a member of the Democratic Center party, who announced last October his intention to run in the 2026 presidential election.
Meanwhile, reacting to the incident, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the assassination attempt on Uribe’s life while urging leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “dial back the inflammatory rhetoric.”
“This is a direct threat to democracy and the result of the violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government,” Rubio said in a statement after Miguel Uribe was shot and seriously wounded during a campaign event in Bogota. “President Petro needs to dial back the inflammatory rhetoric and protect Colombian officials.”
‘Targeted from behind’
His party said in a statement on Saturday that an “armed individual” had shot the senator from behind.
The attack “not only endangers the life of a political leader but also threatens democracy and freedom in Colombia,” it said.
The party leader, Colombia’s influential former president Alvaro Uribe, meanwhile described the shooting as an attack against “a hope for the country.”
Bogota Mayor Carlos Galan said on X that “the shooter has been captured.”
Uribe is a member of a family with a long political tradition in Colombia. One of his grandfathers was former Colombia president Julio Cesar Turbay, who led the country from 1978 to 1982.
His mother, Diana Turbay, was a renowned journalist who was kidnapped by the Medellin Cartel, led by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, and who was killed in a failed military rescue operation in 1991.
Uribe himself has been a senator since 2022. He previously served as Bogota’s government secretary and city councillor.
He also ran for city mayor in 2019 but lost that election.
Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez said on X that authorities were offering a reward of around $700,000 for information leading to the capture of those behind Saturday’s attack.
