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Igor Patrick

China said on Wednesday it would help Colombia recover from the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck the country’s west on Monday, killing more than 200 people.
Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing would do what it could in suitable ways, in line with what Colombia requested, in response to questions from Xinhua and Telesur at a briefing in Beijing.
Guo said no Chinese nationals had been reported killed or injured in the disaster, and that the embassy in Bogota was “working to verify the safety of Chinese citizens in the affected areas”. He advised them to guard against secondary hazards from aftershocks.
President Xi Jinping sent a message of condolences on Tuesday to his Colombian counterpart Abelardo de la Espriella, expressing sympathies to bereaved families and the injured.
Guo said Xi had told the Colombian leader that his people would “pull together and recover and rebuild soon” under the new government.
The China International Development Cooperation Agency said separately on Tuesday that it was following the disaster closely and would provide support in appropriate ways based on Colombian requests, according to Xinhua. Spokeswoman Tang Ying said the assistance would be “within China’s capacity”.


Those offers reached a government sworn in three days before the quake and committed to making realignment with the United States its central foreign policy promise.
De la Espriella took office on Friday after defeating leftist senator Ivan Cepeda by about 200,000 votes in a second round held in June.
Colombia initially declined offers of foreign rescue personnel and asked instead for relief supplies, a decision that drew criticism from opposition figures and disaster specialists as the death toll climbed.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Bogota had told his government that Colombian rescue, medical and emergency teams were already deployed, and that only supplies were needed.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had put 255 personnel on standby, including military engineers, doctors, search specialists and sniffer dogs.
Chinese ambassador Zhu Jingyang was also among the first envoys to press Bogota publicly on the delay.
He asked the government to name the official and the channel responsible for coordinating international assistance, in a message he urged followers to circulate. The request went unanswered for more than a day, according to Colombian media reports.
Colombia’s foreign ministry said this week it had activated diplomatic channels with allied countries and installed a command post for international cooperation, led by Foreign Minister Omar Bula on the president’s instructions.
Priority requests include field hospitals, food kits, hygiene and water supplies, cooking equipment and household goods. Rescue teams from the United States, Israel, Ecuador and El Salvador were expected to begin arriving on Wednesday.
Washington also announced a Disaster Assistance Response Team and US$15.5 million for emergency shelter and relief. Multilateral lenders offered about US$1.3 billion in financing, which is separate from the humanitarian donations and comes as credit rather than aid.
Washington’s ask
The contrasting responses to US and Chinese offers follow two months of signals that Colombia is stepping back from the opening to Beijing pursued by former president Gustavo Petro.
Nate Morris, US President Donald Trump’s nominee as ambassador to Bogota, told a Senate confirmation hearing on August 5 that De la Espriella had committed to withdrawing Colombia from the Belt and Road Initiative.
Morris told senators that “every nation had to decide whether it wanted to do business with the United States or China”. De la Espriella has not confirmed the commitment publicly and Colombia’s foreign ministry has published no formal notice of withdrawal since the inauguration.
Colombia joined the initiative on May 15 last year, when then foreign minister Laura Sarabia signed a memorandum of understanding at the China-CELAC Forum in Beijing.
Petro described it at the time as a statement of intent that later governments could choose to act on, while his foreign ministry called it “the most important decision Colombia had taken in 25 years”.
Beijing signalled continuity in the days after the June vote, when Guo said China viewed relations with Colombia from a strategic and long-term perspective and was ready to work with the incoming government. Bilateral relations had deepened under Petro, with two-way trade making China the country’s second largest partner.
Meanwhile, Chinese contractors remain embedded in Colombia’s largest infrastructure project. China Harbour Engineering Company, part of the consortium building the first line of the Bogota metro, is under investigation by Colombian prosecutors over allegations that an executive demanded cash from a subcontractor to release payments.
The consortium denies wrongdoing and says the money was a contractual retention. The line was about 78 per cent complete in May and is scheduled to open in March 2028.
Search enters third day
Colombia’s Institute of Legal Medicine said it had received 202 bodies from Choco, Caldas, Risaralda and Valle del Cauca, of which 121 had been identified, including five children.
Asocapitales, the association of capital cities, reported 188 deaths and 1,677 injuries in a separate tally. De la Espriella said on Tuesday that 181 people had died and 2,595 were injured, with 195 missing, though civilian databases put the number of missing closer to 4,000.
The quake struck at 7.34am Monday with its epicentre near San Jose del Palmar, a town about 400km west of Bogota. Colombia’s Geological Service has recorded more than 70 aftershocks and describes the event as the “strongest to hit the country this century”. Much of the area is reachable only by boat, air or jungle track, and the extent of damage there remains unclear.
Rescue crews were still pulling survivors from collapsed buildings in Cali, Pereira and Manizales on the third day of operations. The paediatric and neonatal wards of a hospital in Cali were among the structures that came down.
De la Espriella signed a decree declaring a national disaster and ordered three days of mourning, with flags at half-mast on public buildings and at Colombian missions abroad.


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Beijing pledges help after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, but its ambassador’s request for a coordinator remains unanswered


Beijing pledges help after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, but its ambassador’s request for a coordinator remains unanswered.


China offers Colombia quake relief as new president’s US pivot leaves Beijing waiting

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing pledges help after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, but its ambassador’s request for a coordinator remains unanswered

Beijing pledges help after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, but its ambassador’s request for a coordinator remains unanswered