A truck bomb on Saturday exploded near a Colombian police station not far from the Venezuelan border, wounding 14 people just days before Colombian president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella takes office.
The government in Bogota blamed rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country’s largest active guerrilla group, for the early-morning blast in Cucuta.
Eleven police officers and three civilians were hurt in the incident, according to the latest official toll.
Photo: Reuters
Two of the wounded officers were “fighting for their lives,” Norte de Santander Governor William Villamizar said.
De la Espriella — the right-wing millionaire lawyer who takes the oath of office on Friday, succeeding Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in Colombia’s history — condemned the attack, calling it “an atrocious, violent act.”
“Terrorism will not intimidate Colombia,” he wrote on X.
Colombian Minister of National Defense Pedro Sanchez said ELN “narcoterrorists” were to blame, and offered a reward of more than US$64,000 for any information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.
Guerrilla groups have issued warnings to De la Espriella, who plans to end the peace negotiations Petro had been conducting with various armed organizations.
Petro’s talks with the ELN came to a halt in January last year, after the group launched an offensive against rival guerrillas in the northeast, killing more than 100 people.
Presidential inaugurations are traditionally held at the Colombian Congress building in Bogota, but the president-elect requested that the ceremony be moved to Cali in the country’s southwest, a region plagued by clashes between drug trafficking gangs and guerrillas.
De la Espriella’s inauguration is expected to involve a massive security deployment, with about 11,000 soldiers and police officers carrying out operations on land, at sea and in the air.
The president-elect has repeatedly alleged the existence of a plot to assassinate him.
Petro is spending his last days in office on a visit to Cuba and has so far not commented on the attack.
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