Colombian President Petro says ‘escaped being killed’ in assassination plot

Gustavo Petro has been warning for months about an alleged plot by drug traffickers who want to target him.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro says that he has escaped an assassination attempt while travelling by helicopter with his daughters, after warning for months about an alleged plot by drug traffickers who want to target him.

Petro said on Tuesday that his helicopter was unable to land at a destination on Colombia’s Caribbean coast the previous day because of fears that unspecified people “were going to shoot”.

“Last night, I couldn’t land because I was informed that they were going to shoot at the helicopter I was travelling in with my daughters,” Petro said in a report carried by the public broadcaster Radio Nacional de Colombia.

“They didn’t even turn on the lights where I was supposed to land,” he said.

Speaking at a Council of Ministers meeting in Cordoba Department, a region in the north of the country where heavy rains and flooding have led to a humanitarian emergency, Petro said that he had been forced to drastically change his travel plans due to threats to his safety.