Colombian and Ecuadorian leaders raised trade suspicions after President Gustavo Petro announced that 27 charred bodies had been found at the border.
Published March 17, 2026
BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian President Gustavo Petro says 27 charred bodies have been found on the country’s border with Ecuador, just one day after suggesting that Ecuadorian forces may have bombed Colombian territory.
“The bombings along the Colombia-Ecuador border do not appear to be the work of armed groups. They do not have aircraft. They do not appear to be the work of Colombian security forces. I did not order them,” Petro wrote in a post on X on Tuesday morning.
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The charges came amid a military operation launched by the US-backed Ecuador against armed groups in the region earlier this month. Ecuadorian President Daniel Novoa claimed that all strikes occurred within Ecuador’s borders.
The controversy began during Monday night’s Cabinet meeting, when Mr. Petro speculated about the source of a bomb “dropped from a plane” near Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador.
“We will thoroughly investigate the situation. It happened very close to the border with Ecuador. This confirms my suspicions to some extent, but we need to investigate thoroughly. They are bombing us from Ecuador, they are not insurgents,” the president said.
Late Tuesday, Colombia’s Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying security forces and experts were sent to the area “to determine the origin of the explosive and assess the condition of this explosive in order to proceed with its destruction.”
Novoa dismissed Petro’s accusations on Tuesday morning, writing to X: “President Peter, your declaration is false. We are acting on our territory, not yours.”
Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director of Latin America at the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, said the exact details of the attack are still unclear, and “it’s very unclear whether this came from Ecuador, what happened, and who exactly was attacked.”
However, the alleged bombing comes just weeks after the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced it had begun a joint operation with the Ecuadorian military to combat drug trafficking in South America.
In early March, Ecuador’s military bombed a camp belonging to the Commandos de la Frontera (Border Special Forces), a Colombian armed group that operates on both sides of the two countries’ shared border. Quito said the operation was carried out in Ecuador with support from U.S. intelligence agencies.
In February, Noboa imposed a 30% tariff on Colombia, which he described as a “security fee.” Bogota responded with reciprocal tariffs, and the dispute subsequently escalated to the point of imposing a 50% import tax on each other.
Ecuador had one of the highest murder rates in Latin America last year, and Noboa is under increasing pressure to tackle organized crime.
He has sought to shift the blame to Bogota, which has failed to address security concerns on the border between the two countries, a hub for illegal gold mining and a key hub for cocaine trafficking.
Dickinson explained that Novoa wants to pressure Petro to take a more military stance against insurgents along the border.
But she pointed out that “this bilateral crisis between the two countries is doing far more harm than good in resolving this issue, because what we really need to confront transnational threats is a transnational response.”
