Colombia’s armed conflict!
Bogota, Apr 25 (EFE).-
At least 19 civilians were dead and 48 wounded Saturday in a cylinder bomb attack on the Pan-American Highway in southwestern Colombia.
“According to preliminary reports, this horrific incident has resulted in a devastating toll of 19 civilian fatalities,” five more than initially reported the day before, stated the Cauca Governorate in a decree declaring three days of mourning for the tragedy.
The National Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) confirmed the information in a statement, expressing its “deep regret for the events that occurred in the department of Cauca and announcing the start of forensic examination procedures for the 19 victims.”
“The forensic work is being carried out with the participation of six interdisciplinary teams comprising forensic doctors, dentists, anthropologists, fingerprint experts, technicians, and support personnel” for the identification of the victims and the determination of the causes of death, the IML added.
In the three-day mourning decree, the Cauca Governorate noted that between the bombing on the Pan-American Highway and other attacks perpetrated yesterday, “the balance stands at more than 48 civilians injured, five of whom are minors.”
The incident marked a continuation of an offensive by illegal armed groups in southwestern Colombia, which began the previous day with two attacks on battalions.
According to the army, the attack was perpetrated on a stretch of the road known as “El Tunel” in Cajibio municipality, Cauca department, as guerrillas from the Jaime Martinez column – part of the dissidents of the former FARC – dropped the explosives-laden device that fell on a bus and other vehicles.
The explosion not only destroyed the bus but at least 15 other vehicles and caused a huge crater on the Pan American highway.
Images from the incident site show a huge trail of destruction, with bodies lying on the ground, among twisted irons, similar to a war zone.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in a post on social media platform X, described the perpetrators of the attack as “terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers.”
According to the commander of the Military Forces, General Hugo Alejandro Lopez, the stretch of the road where the cylinder bomb fell had been blockaded by the Jaime Martinez “terrorists,” who were engaged in a confrontation with a unit of the armed forces around two kilometers from there.
The Jaime Martínez column is part of a group of FARC dissidents, led by Nestor Gregorio Vera, also known as Ivan Mordisco, the most wanted man in Colombia with a large bounty on his head.
The departments of Cauca, Valle del Cauca and Nariño, all in southwestern Colombia, regularly witness attacks by armed guerrilla groups, which launched a fresh escalation on Friday with explosive attacks on two battalions in the area.
The first attack was perpetrated in Cali, capital of Valle del Cauca, while at night cylinders were thrown in the neighboring city of Palmira, in both cases without leaving casualties.
On Saturday, before the explosion in the Pan American highway, the Cerro Santana radar in the town of El Tambo (Cauca), used to control air traffic in the southwest of the country, was also attacked, according to the civil aviation agency Aerocivil.
The department of Cauca, located between the Andes mountain range and the Pacific Ocean, has been the scene of conflict for decades for territorial control given its strategic position to transport cocaine produced in the mountains to the sea. EFE
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