The strikes on the Gulf Clan took place in a gold mining region in northwestern Antioquia department, one of the group's strongholds.

Petro accused the cartel unit targeted in this attack of ambushing of special forces members and murdering a local mining leader, Jaime Gallego.

Writing on X, the president added that the security forces had captured a Gulf Clan member and seized 13 rifles.

The Gulf Clan was born out of the right-wing paramilitary groups that fought left-wing guerrillas in the 1990s, sometimes in cahoots with drug traffickers, before laying down arms in the 2000s.

In 2023, the clan's notorious leader Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias "Otoniel," was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for cocaine smuggling.

Illegal gold mining is another big revenue-spinner for the group, along with racketeering and migrant smuggling.

Petro, Colombia's first left-wing president, launched peace talks with the Gulf Clan and several other armed groups after coming to power in 2022.

But the talks with the Gulf Clan quickly collapsed and his broader peace process is in disarray as left-wing guerrillas and cartels step up their turf wars for territory and cocaine trafficking routes.

Of all the armed groups still active in Colombia since the left-wing FARC rebel army signed a peace deal in 2016, the Gulf Clan is the one that has recruited the most in the past few years, Colombia's new Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez told AFP in mid-March.