Colombia Car Bomb Hits Police Academy

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Members of the Colombian Technical Investigation Team work at the site of a car bomb explosion in front of the Santander General School, a police academy in Bogota, on Thursday.CreditCreditMauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Nicholas Casey

Jan. 17, 2019

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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A car bomb exploded in front of a Bogotá police academy Thursday morning, killing at least eight people, wounding 23 and spreading fear about a revival of Colombia’s violent past.

Images from the academy in the southern part of the Colombian capital showed the remains of a large explosion that had blackened the streets, left buildings pockmarked with shrapnel and even blew the leaves off nearby trees and the tiles off rooftops.

Dazed police officers wandered the site of the academy, the Santander General School, looking for survivors. There were fears that the casualty figures, reported by the Defense Ministry, could rise.

“My solidarity is with our police officers faced with this terrorist act,” the mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, said on his Twitter account.

Iván Duque, Colombia’s president, who had been away from the capital, called the bombing a “miserable terrorist act” and said that he was returning to direct the investigation. “All Colombians reject terrorism and are united to confront it,” he said on Twitter.

The car bombing rattled nerves in Bogotá, not only for the number of dead, but also for its significance: Such attacks were long the norm in the capital as drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas waged aggressive terror campaigns in the city with car bombs.

Family members of victims of a car bombing outside the entrance to the police academy.CreditJohn Wilson Vizcaino/Associated Press

But it has been years since there was an attack of this kind in Bogotá. No group immediately claimed responsibility.

“May God bless our country and not allow that the dark period when violence reigned returns to our beloved Colombia,” said a Twitter user who identified himself as César Pachón.

By midday Thursday, relatives of students of the Santander General School had gathered to search for their loved ones.

Among them was Leonor Pardo, a saleswoman whose 21-year-old son had been studying at the academy and had just been found unharmed.

“We heard an explosion — it was horrible because the first thing I thought of was my son,” said Ms. Pardo, who was near the police academy at the time. “I nearly fainted.”

But Ms. Pardo and others at the scene said they suspected Colombia’s remaining guerrilla fighters, many of whom remain at large despite the signing of a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest group, in 2016.

“We don’t know if it was the guerrillas or who it was,” said Ms. Pardo. “But the guerrillas have certainly been gaining strength.”

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The scene of a deadly car bombing at a police academy in Colombia’s capital.CreditJuan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Last January, guerrilla fighters of National Liberation Army killed five police officers and wounded more than 40 by bombing a police station in the port city of Barranquilla.

The group also kidnapped four soldiers, three police officers and two military contractors last year in a bid to pressure the government to enter into peace talks. The hostages were released, but the government refused to negotiate.

Regardless who was behind the Thursday bombing, it was a blow to Mr. Duque, whose approval ratings as president have fallen in recent months, particularly on issues of security.

“I think this comes at a critical juncture for Duque’s early government,” said Arlene B. Tickner, a political scientist at Bogotá’s Del Rosario University who writes a column in El Espectador, a Colombia newspaper. “He’s not high in the polls, he’s subject to ridicule in some circles and under tremendous pressure on security,” she said.

Under pressure of his own right-wing Democratic Center party, Mr. Duque recently replaced the heads of the national police and armed forces with hard-liners and promoted other top military officials who had been linked to extrajudicial killings, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The decision to appoint officers linked by credible evidence to serious abuses conveys the toxic message to the troops that respect for human rights is not necessary,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the head of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division.

The bombing also could have repercussions for Bogotá’s residents, said Ms. Tickner. Many of them, like her, have been eager to turn a page on Colombia’s history of violence, she said.

“As someone who has been through some of the most horrific times of violence in cities such as Bogotá, this brings back terrible memories of passing by cars left alone and wondering if there was a car bomb,” she said.