BOGOTA: Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential contender, was fighting for his life in hospital after being shot during a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday, according to his wife and government and party authorities.
The Colombian Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that “a minor under 15 years of age was arrested carrying a Glock pistol-type firearm (9mm)”, and President Gustavo Petro ordered an investigation into who had ordered the attack.
The 39-year-old senator, who is running for the presidency in 2026, is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Centre party founded by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The two men are not related.
According to a party statement condemning the attack, the senator was hosting a campaign event in a public park in the Fontibon neighbourhood in the capital on Saturday 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 account on X that he was “fighting for his life”.
People gathered outside the Santa Fe Foundation hospital where Uribe was being treated, some staged candlelight vigils and prayed, while others carried Colombian flags.
Colombia’s Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez said a suspect had been arrested in the shooting and that authorities were investigating whether others were involved. Sanchez said he had visited the hospital where Uribe was being treated.
Thorough investigation
The government is offering some $730,000 as a reward for information in the case.
Colombia’s presidency issued a statement saying the government “categorically and forcefully” rejected the violent attack, and called for a thorough investigation into the events that took place.
Uribe is from a prominent family in Colombia, with links to the country’s Liberal Party. His father was a businessman and union leader. His mother, 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.
Colombia has for decades been embroiled in a conflict between leftist rebels, criminal groups descended from right-wing paramilitaries, and the government.
Leftist President Gustavo Petro sympathised with the senator’s family in a message on X, saying, “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.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the U.S. “condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination” of Uribe, blaming Petro’s “inflammatory rhetoric” for the violence.
