Former Top FARC Guerrilla Calls for Return to War in Colombia

MEDELLÍN, Colombia — A former top commander of Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, vowed a return to war and issued a new call to arms on Thursday, three years after the rebels signed a peace deal to disarm.

The commander, whose real name is Luciano Marín but is known by the alias Iván Márquez said in a newly released video that his group, known as FARC, would return to fighting because the government had not honored the agreement.

He called for “a new phase of the struggle” for the group under “the universal right that all people have to raise arms against oppression.”

There was no immediate reaction from the Colombian government.

In the video, Mr. Márquez, whose rank is currently unknown, appears alongside two other rebel commanders whose whereabouts have been unknown. All appeared armed and in uniform, flanked by other rebels in what seemed to be a new guerrilla camp in the jungle.

Three years ago next month, FARC signed a peace deal with the government meant to end a 52-year war in which an estimated 220,000 people were killed and millions were displaced from their homes. Mr. Márquez had been one of the negotiators of the accords, which were hammered out over years in Cuba.

“This is a continuation of the guerrilla struggle in response to the betrayal of the state’s betrayal of the Havana accords,” he said. “It’s the march of Colombia’s poor, ignored and despised, toward justice, which glimmers in the hills of the future.”