BOGOTA, Feb 8, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Friday that the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel was the "head of the ELN" guerrilla group whose recent turf war over trafficking routes has killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands in his country.

The Colombian government has led a military offensive against ELN rebels in the country's northeast since mid-January, after a bloody onslaught between the left-wing armed group and ex-members of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla force, which disarmed under a 2016 peace pact.

Colombia is the world's biggest cocaine producer, and the ELN and FARC dissidents vie for territory and control of lucrative coca plantations and trafficking routes in the Catatumbo border region where the recent violence has left about 50 people dead and more than 50,000 displaced.

"The owners of these structures are not Colombian commanders... The Sinaloa cartel is the current head of the ELN (National Liberation Army)," leftist leader Petro said in a speech in the northeastern city of Bucaramanga.

For years there have been links between Colombia's armed groups and the Sinaloa cartel, co-founded by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a US prison.

The criminal organization has become fragmented after the July 2024 arrest of its other founder, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. It left a power vacuum that sparked a war between two cartel factions which has left hundreds dead and hundreds more missing in northwestern Mexico since last year.

A 2023 Colombian police report released last month by Bogota councilor Julian Sastoque said the 60-year-old ELN and other armed groups in Colombia "are entering into international criminal alliances and negotiating" with the Sinaloa cartel "through the exchange of cocaine hydrochloride for specialized weaponry."

The ELN had been holding peace talks with Petro's government since 2022, but the fighting in Catatumbo prompted him to suspend the negotiations and deploy more than 10,000 soldiers to the area to contain the violence.

Earlier this month, President Petro said during a government meeting that cocaine "is no worse than whisky" and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America.

Colombia has spent decades fighting against drug trafficking, but remains the world's largest cocaine exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe.