Four people were killed by lightning in two separate incidents in northern Colombia Thursday.
A mother and her two children were killed when lightning struck their home, which subsequently burned down, in the department of Cordoba.
Meanwhile, a young farmer was killed as he cleared out a drainage channel, in the department of Sucre.
The deaths came less than two weeks after Colombia’s rainy season officially began. Parts of northern Colombia have been battered by storms and the casualties were accompanied by several lightning-related injuries.
The Cordoba incident occurred in the village of Arroyo de Piedra, with 35-year-old Nelfira del Carmen Suarez Baltazar and her children Dennis and Juan Carlos Velasquez perishing in what Radio Caracol described as a “humble home.”
In the Sucre village of Babilonia, 22-year-old Onalbis Velasquez Lidueñas, reported by El Universal to be the youngest in a family of nine children, died as he worked to alleviate the overflow of rainwater on his land.