Colombia, car bomb explodes in Bogotá. Dozens dead
Rights — di Andrea Barolini
On Thursday 17 January, an attack struck a military school in Bogotá, Colombia. It is the most serious attack since 2003. Suspicion falls on the Eln.
Colombia, car bomb explodes in Bogotá. Dozens dead
On Thursday 17 January, an attack struck a military school in Bogotá, Colombia. It is the most serious attack since 2003. Suspicion falls on the Eln.
Twenty-one dead and 68 injured. The toll from the attack that, on the morning of Thursday 17 January, shook the city of Bogotá and plunged Colombia back into fear is still provisional. The target was the Francisco de Paula Santander police school, located in the southern quadrant of the capital.
Investigators favour the Ejército de Liberación Nacional lead
A man approached the facility in a car bomb and blew himself up. The attack has so far not been claimed (which rarely happens in Colombia), but the authorities favour the lead pointing to the Ejercito de liberación nacional (Eln, National Liberation Army), a group engaged in guerrilla activity and still active despite the peace agreements reached in 2016 between the government and the fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
UPDATE: At least 21 people killed and dozens wounded after a truck bomb exploded at a police academy in Colombia's capital - the worst attack in Bogota in 16 years aje.io/v5pkr
Also lending weight to the theory of the extremist group's involvement is the identity of the attacker: José Aldemar Rojas, 56 years old, originally from the eastern department of Arauca, one of the Eln's "strongholds". What is certain, meanwhile, is that Colombia had not seen an episode of violence of such gravity since 2003.
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The blast occurred at around 9:40 and was so powerful that only four of the victims have so far been identified. Witnesses spoke of a car that hurtled at high speed towards the school before the explosion, confirming the theory of a suicide attack: a practice without precedent in Colombia.
Colombia's president: "Our entire society has been struck"
"This attack," said the president of the South American nation, Iván Duque Márquez, "did not only target our young people and law enforcement officers: it is an act that strikes at our entire society. We will not bend, because we have always fought and defeated terrorism."
For their part, the Farc leadership expressed their solidarity with the victims' families and condemned the use of violence. But President Duque's right wing exploited the attack to assault the policy decided by the previous government of Juan Manuel Santos (also right-wing but a pacifist). "The state," said former conservative president Alvaro Uribe, "has submitted to the terrorists."