8 killed by car bomb at police academy in Bogota, Colombia

At least eight people were killed as a car bomb exploded at a police academy in Bogota, the Colombian Defense Ministry said Thursday.

The explosion targeted the General Santander police academy in the south of the capital, Bogota.

The car forced its entry onto the academy premises, according to broadcaster RCN.

Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa at first said at least five people were killed and 10 injured. The defense ministry later raised the death toll to eight.

Several of the surrounding buildings were damaged, local media reported.

Images on social media showed the remains of a vehicle in flames in the parking area of the police school, and emergency responders at the scene.

Authorities did not immediately say if the dead and wounded were police or civilians.

President Ivan Duque said he and his top military commanders were rushing back to the capital from a visit to a western state to oversee police investigation into what he called a “miserable” attack.

“All of us Colombians reject terrorism and are united in confronting it,” Duque said in a tweet. “We won’t bend in the face of violence.”

For decades, residents of Bogota lived in fear of being caught in a bombing by leftist rebels or Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel. But as Colombia’s conflict has wound down, security has improved and attacks have become less frequent.

While authorities had yet to suggest who was behind the attack, attention was focused on leftist rebels from the National Liberation Army, which has been stepping up attacks on police targets in Colombia amid a standoff with the conservative Duque over how to re-start stalled peace talks.

The group known as the ELN was long considered a lesser military threat than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, whose 7,000 guerrilla fighters disarmed as part of a 2016 peace accord. But in the wake of the peace deal the Cuban-inspired insurgency has been gaining strength, especially along the eastern border with Venezuela, where it has carried out a number of kidnappings and bombings of oil pipelines that have hardened Duque’s resolve in refusing to resume peace talks stalled since he took office last August.

Thursday’s bombing was the deadliest in the capital since an explosion at the upmarket Andino shopping mall in June 2017 killed three people, including a French woman, and injured another 11. Police later arrested several suspected members of a far-left urban guerrilla group called the People Revolutionary’s Movement for the bombing.