Five policemen were killed and three injured by a suspected FARC bomb in the southern Colombian department of Caqueta on Wednesday.
“Around 7.30 on Wednesday evening a national police patrol was ambushed with a heavy explosive near the checkpoint of Maguare, when [the patrol] was moving from Doncello to Rionegro,” the department’s Government Secretary Edilberto Ramon told French news agency AFP.
Ramon did not have further information about the attack 200 miles south of Bogota, but stressed that “the FARC is active in this area” and “is held responsible for the ambush.”
The Caqueta attack is the first publicized deadly attack on security forces since the inauguration of President Juan Manuel Santos on August 7.