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By Daniel Ramos
LA PAZ (Reuters) -Bolivia's government on Monday denied accusations that it had led a targeted attack on ex-President Evo Morales, whose car was shot at on Sunday, claiming the former leader's convoy had fired on special anti-narcotics police who were carrying out a patrol.
Morales claims the government had attempted to assassinate him when bullets struck his car early on Sunday, marking a new chapter of tensions in the Andean nation between Morales and former ally President Luis Arce.
Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo said during a press conference that the FELCN anti-drug trafficking unit was carrying out a standard highway patrol when Morales' convoy shot at police and ran over an officer.
Morales said in a radio interview on Sunday that he had indeed shot back at police after they opened fire.
Morales' vehicles were suspected of transporting drugs, according to the government.
The ex-president called the allegations that authorities were carrying out an anti-drug trafficking operation false.
"If that were the case, why did your elite military and police team shoot more than 18 times at the vehicles I was traveling in?" he wrote on X.
Del Castillo added that Morales had instructed his vehicles to be burned after the run-in, destroying any evidence before it could be collected.
"If he had really been victim of an assassination attempt, it would have been in his interest to leave them intact" so that investigators could search them to collect evidence, del Castillo said.
"Mr. Morales, nobody believes the theater you have staged," del Castillo told the press conference.
The rising tensions between the current and former presidents and their followers threaten to ignite a political crisis in Bolivia in the run-up to an election next year.
Morales, who served three terms as president, resigned in 2019 after a disputed election that plunged the country into turmoil. Arce, his former economy minister, was elected the following year.
Arce is expected to run for reelection in 2025. Morales also has said he wants to be a candidate, splitting the once-hegemonic MAS party into opposing camps that support the current and former presidents.
(Reporting by Daniel Ramos; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Richard Chang)
