Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos has suspended peace talks with Marxist ELN rebels after a series of bombings over the weekend killed seven police officers and injured dozens.
The government and the National Liberation Army have been in talks since February 2017 to end a five-decade war but Santos said he will not accept the group's continued violence after it launched attacks on three police stations nationwide on Saturday and Sunday.
"My patience and the patience of the Colombian people has its limits, so I have taken the decision to suspend the start of the fifth cycle of negotiations, which was scheduled for the coming days, until we see coherence between the ELN's words and its actions," Santos said on Monday.
Five police officers were killed and more than 40 wounded on Saturday morning when the ELN detonated a bomb in the northern port city of Barranquilla as they lined up to receive orders.
Two more died and one was wounded just before midnight on Saturday in rural Bolivar province, and the third attack took place about four hours later in the city of Soledad, close to Barranquilla, injuring five police and one civilian.
The 2000-strong ELN and the government have been in formal peace talks for nearly a year, and the two sides agreed to their first ceasefire in October. But the rebels launched a new offensive when the ceasefire expired earlier this month, killing security force members, bombing major oil pipelines and kidnapping an oil contractor.
A larger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, demobilised under a 2016 peace deal with the government. It is now a political party known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force.
In a statement on Monday, the ELN said it would support a new ceasefire but that attacks would continue in the absence of one.
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