Three Polices Killed in Chile, President Boric Calls for Unit

April 27, 2024 Hour: 4:32 pm

Three Carabineros (police officers) were killed on Saturday morning in a Mapuche area in southern Chile, victims of an ambush on the day that marks the anniversary of the police institution.

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The Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, appealed to the unit on Saturday amid the commotion over the murder of three police officers of the militarized Carabineros body and said that, to face this situation, “there must be neither left nor right, neither official nor opposition”.

“Chile must be whole as a single fist, whole as a single force to do justice, so that there is no impunity, to disrupt these gangs and to pay for their crimes, wherever they are,” said the president during the three officilials mourning.

Three police officers killed in an ambush in the #Chilean region of Biobío: they were burned
President Gabriel Boric, who classifies the crime as “#terrorism,” travels to the area supported by the three powers of the State#Chile https://t.co/pInJ5VhIbZ pic.twitter.com/NycKRikpiV

— Shadi Alkasim (@Shadi_Alkasim)
April 27, 2024

“In this, we are all necessary, so is General Yañez,” he said in a message to the director of the Carabineros, who in recent weeks has received pressure from much of the ruling party to step aside after the Prosecutor’s Office requested his indictment for responsibility for human rights violations committed during the massive protests of 2019.

In Santiago de Chile, the capital, hundreds of people gathered outside the presidential palace of La Moneda to protest the killings of the three polices which bodies were found in a burned-out armored patrol vehicle on a roald near the city of Concepcion, some 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of capital Santiago. They appeared to have been shot.

The attack against the three officers of Public Order Control (COP) of the Los Alamos police station took place in the town of Cañete around 1:30 local time (6:30 GMT), when a group of armed men attacked his police vehicle and set fire to the vehicle, where a sergeant and two corporals were burned to death.

Araucanía and part of the Bio Bío region, where the attack was perpetrated, has been under a state of emergency since May 2022, as the south-central area of Chile has a scenario of conflict between the indigenous peoples, the State and large landowners and foresters who exploit lands and forests considered ancestral by indigenous communities.