Death toll from Colombia road bombing rises to 20

A devastating highway bombing in Colombia has killed 20 people and injured 36 others, marking one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the region in years, according to a statement posted on X by the local department’s governor.

The blast – which local and national authorities have blamed on armed groups – struck just one month before Colombians are due to elect a new president on 31 May.

Cauca Department Governor Octavio Guzman called it the area’s “most brutal and ruthless attack against the civilian population in decades,” saying the explosion gouged out a crater measuring 200 cubic meters.

Among the dead were 15 women and five men, all adults, he said. Three of the wounded remain in intensive care. Five children were also hurt, though he said they “are out of danger.”

The force of the explosion overturned several vehicles on the highway.

At a news conference on Saturday, military chief Hugo Lopez said the bomb detonated after attackers brought traffic to a halt by using a bus and another vehicle to block the road.

“It is a terrorist attack against the civilian population,” Mr Lopez said.

The bombing came a little more than a month before the national vote to choose a successor to leftist President Gustavo Petro.

“Those who carried out this attack… are terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers,” Mr Petro said on X. “I want our very best soldiers to confront them.”

Mr Petro said Ivan Mordisco, Colombia’s most-wanted criminal, was behind the attack. The president has previously likened him to the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

The bloodshed followed a bomb attack on Friday at a military base in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, which injured two people and was followed by a string of attacks across Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments.

Mr Lopez said authorities had logged 26 attacks in the two departments over the previous two days.

Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday that military and police deployments had been increased across the affected areas.

Colombia has long faced violence from armed groups, many of which fund their activities through drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion, and have repeatedly tried to sway elections through intimidation and bloodshed.

Remnants of the FARC guerrilla movement that refused to accept the government’s 2016 peace agreement have also been working to derail Mr Petro’s faltering peace talks.

Security has emerged as one of the defining issues of the presidential race. The threat of political violence came into stark view last June, when conservative presidential frontrunner Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot in broad daylight while campaigning in the capital, Bogota. He died two months later.

Leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, a key architect of Mr Petro’s contentious strategy of negotiating with armed groups, currently leads in the polls.

He is followed by right-wing contenders Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, both of whom have vowed a hardline response to rebel groups.

All three candidates have reported death threats and are campaigning under heavy security.