The Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe was taken to the hospital bloodied on Saturday after being shot. The opposition senator was holding a campaign event in the capital, Bogota. The shooter has been apprehended.
According to the Colombian news website Semana, Uribe’s head and back were covered in blood. A video online shows multiple shots being heard.
Uribe is currently receiving “emergency assistance,” according to Carlos Fernando Galán, the mayor of Bogota, on X. The man was reportedly hit twice in the head and once in the knee. According to the mayor, the shooter has been captured. “The gruesome attack on Senator Miguel Uribe is a new and deep wound for our democracy,” he also writes. “Political violence has already cost our country too much blood.”
The 39-year-old Uribe is a right-wing senator and a fierce critic of the country’s sitting president, the leftist Gustavo Petro. He “strongly” condemns the attack, he says on X. “This act of violence is not only an attack on a person, but also on democracy, freedom of expression, and the legitimate exercise of politics in Colombia.”
The presidential elections in the country will take place next May. In October, Uribe announced his candidacy. He is a member of the center-right party of ex-president Álvaro Uribe (no relation), who was the country’s political leader from 2002 to 2010.
The United States condemns the attack on Uribe “in the strongest possible terms,” writes Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement. According to Rubio, “violent leftist rhetoric” was the cause of the assassination attempt. “President Petro must moderate his inflammatory rhetoric and protect Colombian officials,” he says.