It is the latest attack on security forces in a region where tensions have long simmered between locals and the state.
Armed robbers ambushed and killed three police officers in southern Chile before setting their cars on fire, authorities said, in the latest attack on police to revive security concerns in the South American country.
In a note in Saturday’s X, President Gabriel Boric described the attack in the municipality of Canete, in the province of Arauco, as “cowardly”, and declared three days of national mourning in honor of the officers, identified as Sergeant Carlos Cisterna, Corporal Sergio Arevalo and Corporal Misael Vidal.
“Today the entire country is in mourning. There is heartbreak, sadness, anger. But these emotions do not paralyze us, they force us, they mobilize us”, wrote Boric. “We will discover the whereabouts of the perpetrators of this terrible crime.”
Authorities said the officers responded to three false emergency calls and were attacked in their vehicle with high-caliber weapons. They burned inside the armored patrol vehicle on a road near the city of Concepción, about 400 kilometers south of the capital, Santiago.
It remains unclear who carried out the attack, but a long-running conflict between the indigenous Mapuche community and landowners and forestry companies in the region has intensified in recent years. The conflict forced the government to impose a state of emergency and mobilize the military to guarantee security.
In Chile, around one in 10 citizens identifies as Mapuche, the tribe that resisted the Spanish conquest centuries ago and was only defeated at the end of the 19th century, after Chile gained its independence.
Large forestry companies and agricultural landowners control large tracts of land originally belonging to the Mapuche, many of whom now live in rural poverty.
Boric, who traveled to the area on Saturday with a large contingent including senior military and congressional officials and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, offered condolences to the families of the victims, promising that the killers would be found and brought to justice.
“There will be no impunity,” he said after firefighters who doused the burning police car made the grisly discovery.
In Santiago, hundreds of people gathered in front of the presidential palace to protest the murders, which coincided with National Police Day, celebrating the 97th anniversary of the creation of the Carabineros, Chile’s military police force. It was the second fatal force attack this month.
Ricardo Yanez, general director of the Carabineros, told reporters that the officers were sent in response to false calls for help coming from the rural road, where they were met with a hail of gunfire.
“This was not a coincidence, it was not random,” he said of the ambush.
The wave of bloodshed has tested Boric, who came to power in 2022 promising to ease tensions in the region, where armed Mapuche activists have stolen timber and attacked forestry companies they claim have invaded their ancestral lands.
Boric’s administration touted its success in reducing Chile’s national homicide rate by 6 percent, according to 2023 government data published earlier this week.
“This attack goes against all the enormous advances that have been made,” said Interior Minister Carolina Toha, a center-left former mayor of Santiago.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
