(UTV|COLOMBO) – A car bomb exploded at a police academy in Colombia’s capital Bogota on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding over 50 in an attack that prompted fears of a return to the country’s violent past.
Authorities said the car broke through checkpoints into the grounds of the General Santander School and exploded, shattering windows of apartments nearby. It was the deadliest attack in Bogota since the government struck a 2016 peace deal with the Marxist FARC rebel group.
President Ivan Duque called the explosion a “crazy terrorist act” against unarmed cadets and said he had ordered police and the military to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
“Colombians have never yielded to terrorism, we have always defeated it. This will not be an exception,” he told a news conference at the school in the south of the city.