Viral video: Moments before Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe shot in head | Watch

Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot multiple times at a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday. The 39-year-old senator from the opposition Democratic Center party was rushed to a medical center where he was stabalised before being moved to a major hospital in north Bogota, news agency Bloomberg reported.

In a video doing the rounds on social media, Uribe can be seen addressing the crowd, seconds before he is shot and commotion ensues. In another video posted on social media, Uribe's head and back can be seen covered in blood. Uribe was campaigning in Fontibon, a neighborhood in west Bogota, when he was attacked.

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The gunman has been detained, Bogota Mayor Carlos Galan said on X. Attorney General Luz Camargo said that a 15-year-old youth was arrested, after being beaten up by members of the public, and that authorities captured a 9mm gun. The minor is currently in a medical center, she said.

A bloodied past

Four Colombian presidential candidates were assassinated at the peak of Colombia's drug cartel terror in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Bloomberg report said. Uribe's mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was murdered by Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel in 1991.

Presidential and congressional elections will be held in the country next year. President Gustavo Petro’s government condemned the shooting, and reiterated its commitment to the protection of all political leaders.

According to the report, Uribe has called for a tough line against the illegal armed groups that control cocaine production, and has repeatedly warned that Colombia is backsliding into terror. Just two days before he was shot, he said in a speech in Cartagena that Colombia is being “dragged back to a past of violence.”

‘Total Peace’ policy

Uribe has repeatedly attacked President Petro's policy of seeking “total peace” through negotiations with guerrillas and the private armies of drug traffickers.

The presidential candidate has also campaigned for a pro-business agenda, and opposes Petro's attempts to increase the role of the state in the economy, the report added.

“Violence can never be the way forward. I strongly condemn the attack against Miguel Uribe,” Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia said on X.

Who is Miguel Uribe?

Grandson of former president Julio Cesar Turbay, Uribe was educated at Colombia's Universidad de los Andes and Harvard's Kennedy School. He had won more votes than any candidate for the senate in the 2022 elections.

Uribe's mentor, former president Alvaro Uribe, to whom he is not related, defined him as a “hope for the motherland”, and said he was praying for his recovery.

In 2023, a presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was gunned down in neighboring Ecuador, where drug gangs have gained strength in recent years, Bloomberg reported.