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The Colombian presidential candidate who was shot in Bogotá has successfully undergone a first operation after being flown to hospital in critical condition, the city’s mayor has said.
Miguel Uribe, a 39-year-old senator who has been running for the presidency in 2026, “overcame the first surgical intervention”, the mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, told media on Sunday. Uribe had entered “the critical hours” of recovery, he added.
Uribe, a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Centre party, was attacked on Saturday, allegedly by a 15-year-old gunman who is now in custody.
According to the party’s statement, the senator had been hosting a campaign event in a public park in the Fontibón neighbourhood of the Colombian capital when “armed subjects shot him in the back”.
The party described the attack as serious, but did not disclose further details on Uribe’s condition. Videos on social media showed a man, identified as Uribe, being tended to after the shooting. He appeared to be bleeding from his head.
Uribe’s wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, wrote on her husband’s X account that he was “fighting for his life”.
The defence minister, Pedro Sánchez, said a suspect had been arrested in the shooting and authorities were investigating whether others were involved. Sánchez said he had visited the hospital where Uribe was being treated.
Colombia’s presidency issued a statement saying the government “categorically and forcefully” rejected the violent attack, and called for a thorough investigation.
Uribe is from a prominent family with links to the country’s Liberal party. 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 cartel leader Pablo Escobar. She was killed during a rescue operation.
The leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, sympathised with the senator’s family, posting online: “I don’t know how to ease your pain. It is the pain of a mother lost, and of a homeland.”
Petro later said in a speech on Saturday night that the person arrested was a minor and that the investigation would focus on finding who had ordered the attack.
“For now there is nothing more than hypothesis,” Petro said, adding that failures in security protocols would also be looked into.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in a statement that the US “condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination” of Uribe, blaming Petro’s “inflammatory rhetoric” for the violence.
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Reuters and AFP contributed to this report.
