Colombia has been rocked by a string of coordinated bomb and gun attacks that killed at least seven people and wounded at least 50 across the country’s south-west, deepening a security crisis roiling the Andean country.
Police said attackers launched 19 attacks on targets in Cali—the country’s third largest city—and several nearby towns, hitting police posts, municipal buildings, and civilian targets. The national police chief, Carlos Fernando Triana, said assailants had attacked targets with car bombs, motorcycle bombs, rifle fire, and a suspected drone. In Cali and the towns of Villa Rica, Guachinte, and Corinto, AFP journalists witnessed the tangled wreckage of vehicles surrounded by scorched debris.
Many Colombians are fearful of a return to the violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when cartel attacks, guerrilla violence and political assassinations were commonplace. Police and experts blamed Tuesday’s attacks on a dissident faction of the once-powerful Farc guerrilla group. Security expert Elizabeth Dickenson of the International Crisis Group said the attacks were likely the work of a group known as the Central General Staff (EMC). The attacks come three days after conservative senator Miguel Uribe was shot twice in the head at close range by an alleged hitman while campaigning in Bogotá.
Read more here.
