Three bombs exploded in the southwest Colombian city of Tumaco late Tuesday. Authorities have blamed rebel group FARC for the attack on the three-year anniversary of the death of FARC leader “Alfonso Cano.”
The bombs went off near the Mayor’s Office and a police station in Tumaco, a Pacific port town on the Ecuadorean border that is home to numerous leftist rebel groups and drug trafficking organizations.
According to the army, 18 officials were injured and windows of neighboring homes and government buildings were shattered.
The simultaneous bomb attacks coincided with the three-year anniversary of the death of “Alfonso Cano,” who was killed in a government bombardment in the southwest in 2011.
MORE: Chronology of ‘Operation Odysseus’ that killed ‘Alfonso Cano’
Local media reported no attacks in other FARC hotbeds in Colombia.
The rebel group, Colombia’s largest, has been engaged in peace talks with the government since November 2012, but has continued carried out attacks on infrastructure and state forces as the warring parties failed to agree a ceasefire for the duration of the talks.
If successful, the talks will end 50 years of violence of the FARC, a rebel group that began as a tiny self-defense army in 1964 but, mainly due to criminal activities like kidnapping and drug trafficking, was able to grow to a formidable army that at the end of the 1990s was close to toppling the government.
Following a series of successful military offensives, one killing the rebels’ commander-in-chief, the FARC were pushed to the periphery of the country.
Sources
- Atribuyen activación de explosivo en Tumaco a la columna Daniel Aldana (Caracol Radio)
- Explotan tres artefactos en Tumaco (El Espectador)