At least 14 folks had been killed and at the very least 38 wounded, together with 5 kids, after a bomb tore aside a busy highway in southwestern Colombia, based on native authorities.
The incident was half of a “wave” of terror assaults this weekend, Colombian officers additionally mentioned, as deadly violence resurges in the country.
“An explosive device was detonated on the Pan-American Highway, in the El Túnel sector of Cajibío, in an indiscriminate attack against the civilian population,” mentioned Cauca Governor Octavio Guzmán in a post on X.
Guzmán later added in an replace that Colombia’s Minister of Defense Pedro Sánchez was on the scene of the explosion to assist “coordinate rescue efforts.” Authorities are “initiating a national-level security council to address this serious situation,” the governor mentioned.
Videos printed on social media confirmed the aftermath of the explosion, with a deep crater blown within the middle of the highway. Mangled automobiles, vehicles, and buses coated in mud and particles lay across the web site of the explosion, together with the our bodies of its victims.
“We are facing a terrorist escalation that demands immediate responses,” Guzmán mentioned, issuing an “urgent” name to nationwide authorities to ensure safety.
Authorities additionally acquired studies of violent incidents elsewhere, together with in El Túnel, El Tambo, Caloto, Popayán, Guachené, Mercaderes, and Miranda, in what General Commander of Military Forces of Colombia Hugo Alejandro López Barreto described as “a wave of attacks.”
Colombia’s Armed Forces have blamed the highway bombing on dissident factions of a defunct leftist militant group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), led by Néstor Gregorio Vera Fernández, a militant chief higher recognized by his nom de guerre “Iván Mordisco.”
FARC laid down its arms in 2016 and finally disbanded after a peace settlement ended over 50 years of warfare with the Colombian authorities – a battle that killed over 220,000 and displaced some 5 million Colombians.
However, some members of the militant group refused to engage within the peace course of from the beginning. These dissident fighters – which embrace splinter teams who battle amongst themselves – have continued a low-level insurgency in some rural elements of Colombia.
López Barreto mentioned at a press convention that “a wave of attacks” passed off within the Cauca and Valle del Cauca departments on Saturday, blaming the “criminal structures” of FARC dissidents led by “Iván Mordisco.”
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“Over these two days in the departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca, 26 terrorist actions have occurred that have affected our civilian population,” López said, including that this sequence of assaults is a response to the “sustained pressure” the Colombian authorities has exerted on these teams’ legal operations.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has known as for “the maximum worldwide pursuit against this narco-terrorist group,” which he additionally linked to “Iván Mordisco.”
“Those who attacked and killed seven civilians and wounded 17 more in Cajibío — many of them indigenous — are terrorists, fascists, and drug traffickers,” Petro wrote on X.
The assault got here hours after Petro’s visit to Venezuela alongside Colombia’s high army brass, the place he introduced with performing President Delcy Rodríguez that the 2 international locations had agreed to collectively fight legal teams alongside their shared border — one of the longest within the area, stretching greater than 1,370 miles.