Colombian president Gustavo Petro condemned the killing of Kurdish journalists Cihan Bilgin and Nazım Daştan.

The president reposted a statement from the Coalition for Women in Journalism on X and wrote: "In present-day Syria, a free Kurdish journalist has been murdered.

I ask the heads of state of Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel and the United States to stop the division of Syria.

They are heading towards a new genocide. The genocide of the Kurdish people. The genocide of the Palestinian people was not enough.

Syria must continue to be a republic, based on its national and ethnic diversity and on the profound autonomy of its diversity.

If free elections are required for countries in the world, let them be held in Syria. The Syrian people have the right to self-determination. The Syrian people must be allowed to hold free elections to define their future.

As I have done in the past, from this distant Colombia in the Middle East, I ask the governments and peoples of the world to care for and support the Kurdish people in Syria, the same people who, with their armed women and their democracy, knew how to stop the fundamentalist fascism of the Islamic State of the Levant."