President: Colombian army faces massive shortage of ammunition and weapons

The Colombian military has lost millions of rounds of ammunition, thousands of grenades and several missiles due to corruption, the country's president said. This was written by BBC, reported UNN.

Details

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that the shortage in the arsenals was discovered during recent inspections of military bases.

He blamed internal corruption, saying that the military sold weapons to traders. The Defense Minister said the investigation into the disappearances was ongoing.

The only way to explain this shortage is that for a long time there have been networks of people in the armed forces and among civilians who have been engaged in massive arms commercialization using legal weapons of the Colombian state

He said the arms shortage was discovered during unannounced visits to two military bases - Tollemaida and La Guajira - on February 12 and April 1, respectively.

Tollemaida lacked more than 808,000 rounds of ammunition and had almost 10,000 fewer grenades in storage than officially reported.

At La Guajira, the disagreement concerned nearly 4.2 million rounds of ammunition and more than 9,300 grenades. Mr. Petro also said that the base lost two Spike missiles, 37 Nimrod missiles and 550 rocket-propelled grenades.

He told reporters that the military supplies were supposed to be transferred to armed groups in Colombia, but could have been smuggled into Haiti or sold on the international black market.

The saddest part of this is that the same ammunition ends up wounding and killing the same soldiers

Context

Colombia is suffering from decades of conflict between government forces, leftist guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary forces, which has killed more than 450,000 people.

At the same time, members of the country's armed forces were convicted on a number of charges of corruption and human rights violations.

At the same time, the Colombian army is one of the best equipped in the region. It has received billions of dollars from the United States to fight drug cartels.

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