At least six people have been killed and dozens injured after a bomb exploded outside a police station in the southern Colombian city of Tumaco, media reports citing officials said late on Wednesday.
The explosion was reportedly caused by a bomb hidden on a motorcycle parked near the police station. The blast killed three policemen and three civilians and left 71 people, including 35 police officers, injured.
The Pacific port city of Tumaco, in Narino State, is fast emerging as one on Colombia's most lawless cities. It has been witnessing frequent armed clashes between drug trafficking gangs and Leftist rebels in recent years, most over the control of lucrative drug smuggling routes.
Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, Colombian officials blamed Leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for the attack. Police believe the attack targeted regional police commander Gen. Jorge Nieto Rojas, who escaped the bombing unhurt.
The FARC rebels have been fighting the Colombian government for almost five decades in Latin America's longest-running insurgency. They are seeking to impose a Leftist regime in the country, which would redistribute land more equitably among its impoverished population.
The outfit is accused of using money generated from smuggling cocaine to fund its insurgency. The FARC insurgents still carry out attacks on Colombian security forces and other targets despite tough security measures enforced by former President Alvaro Uribe, who completed his term in office last August.
The strong anti-militant policies and related military operations initiated by Uribe since he first took office in 2002 had put the rebel group on the defensive. Recent escalation in FARC attacks came despite a series of successes for the Colombian government in its campaign against the rebel group.
Counter-insurgency operations by the Colombian security forces had resulted in the killing of FARC commanders Raul Reye and Jorge Briceno, also known as Mono Jojoy, in aerial bombings in 2008 and 2010 respectively.
Another FARC leader, Alfonso Cano, was killed in a military raid in the country's south-western mountainous region on November 4, 2011. Cano's death was seen as a major victory for President Juan Manuel Santos, who had pledged soon after assuming office in August 2010 to crackdown hard on the rebel group.
President Santos has since rejected a FARC offer to begin peace talks, insisting that such negotiations would be possible only if the rebel group renounced violence and released all hostages. In an effort to show its commitment to future peace talks with the government, the group recently released several people it had been holding hostage for years.
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