Colombian Defense Minister Dies Of Covid-19 Complications

Umer Jamshaid Published January 27, 2021 | 08:50 AM

Bogota, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jan, 2021 ) :Colombian Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, who had overseen the government's fight against drug gangs and guerrillas, died Tuesday of coronavirus complications. He was 69.

Trujillo is the highest-ranking Colombian official and one of nearly a dozen sitting cabinet ministers worldwide to have succumbed to the virus that has killed at least 2.1 million people since the outbreak began in China in December 2019.

Trujillo's death prompted messages of grief and sympathy from near and far, even the government of the United States and the UN.

He was hospitalized in Bogota on January 11 and admitted to intensive care four days later after suffering "acute lung function deterioration," according to the defense ministry.

Colombian President Ivan Duque decreed three days of national mourning in the memory of the minister and other coronavirus victims.

"Thank you, friend; thank you, partner; thank you, minister, thank you @CarlosHolmesTru. Your life was the purest reflection of vocation and public service," Duque wrote on Twitter.

Born in Cali in Colombia's southwest, Trujillo has served in government under six presidents since 1990 -- as interior and education minister, and several times as an ambassador.

After a frustrated bid for the presidency, he was appointed foreign minister in Duque's government in 2018.

He took over the defense portfolio after the resignation in 2019 of Guillermo Botero, accused of having tried to cover up the deaths of children in a military air strike on a drug gang.