COLOMBIA
The Bad Old Days
A car bomb killed at least 10 people and injured 68 others in Bogota Thursday, conjuring up visions of the bad old days in a Colombia hopeful that it had left violence behind it.
President Ivan Duque described the bombing as a “crazy terrorist act” as Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez identified the suspect as a 57-year-old man named José Aldemar Rojas Rodríguez, the BBC reported.
The authorities are now attempting to determine the “intellectual authors” of the blast, Martinez said. Rodríguez, who died in the explosion, had no previous criminal record or established links to terrorist groups.
Detonated inside the compound of a Bogota school for police cadets around 9:30 a.m. during a promotion ceremony, the bomb shattered windows of nearby apartments and houses. It was made with nearly 180 pounds of pentolite, a powerful explosive that has in the past been used by Colombia’s rebel guerrilla groups, Martinez said.
Once routine, such bomb attacks have declined markedly in recent years, as Colombia successfully negotiated a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). FARC’s leader suggested the latest blast’s purpose might be to scuttle a similar deal with the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).
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