The smoke was still covered one of the avenues that cross the Salomia neighborhood, in the north of Cali (the third most populous city in Colombia) when firefighters and toilets struggled to stabilize, on the asphalt, to the dozens of injured that had caused the explosion of a pump truck in front of the Marco Fidel Suárez Aviation Military School. A few meters away, while some neighbors improvised stretchers with doors and planks, others observed, still in shock, how the facade of a nearby supermarket had been reduced to rubble. The attack has left five dead and 36 injured.
Hours before, more than 400 kilometers, in the mountains of the Northeast of Antioquia, a drone (supposedly) demolished a Colombian police helicopter that participated in an operation against drug trafficking and the eradication of cocaine plantations. Eight agents have died and many other injured. The two coordinated attacks, occurred with a few hours apart, have shaken these two regions with thirteen deaths and more than forty injured, while alarms have been activated in the country when produced in two areas where they still operate dissidents of the FARC, Eln and other bands heirs of paramilitarism.
Cali’s attack, as evidenced by the videos that have begun to circulate on social networks after the explosion of the bomb truck, has transformed the crowded avenue of the middle class neighborhood of Salomia into a real war scenario: with passers -by covered in blood, lying in the middle of the road, between the crushing of irons in which several vehicles have been converted. Everything, while from the mayor’s office a reward of up to 400 million pesos (about 100,000 euros) was offered for those who provide the necessary information to identify and locate those responsible for the attack.
A woman, attended after the attack by medical staff
President Gustavo Petro has attributed the attack on a “terrorist reaction” of the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissent of the FARC, in response to the military offensive that takes place in the Micay Canyon, in the neighboring department of Cauca. “I have talked to the Commander of the Cali Metropolitan Police to ensure all entries to the city immediately. We will restrict the traffic of trucks of more than four tons from today at seven in the afternoon until four in the morning of tomorrow Friday,” Mayor Alejandro Eder announced, who has tried to transmit calm to a population commocated by the brutality of the explosion.
Meanwhile, in the Interior Ministry, Armando Benedetti has called an emergency meeting “to design and implement forceful strategies that dismantle these criminal networks.” The high position has called for unity: “I summon all citizens to join this fight, because together, with firmness and resolution, we will protect our peace and build a future without fear.”
Hours before, in the mountains of the Northeast of Antioquia, a drone had knocked down a police helicopter that participated in an operation against drug trafficking and the eradication of coca plantations. Eight agents died and many others were injured. Petro directly pointed to the EMC 36th, while the Minister of Defense pointed to the Gulf clan, “which is nothing other than a drug trafficking and terror poster. As such will be faced with all the force of the State,” he said.
Violence has hit two regions that already know the weight of the war: last June, a wave of attacks shook the departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca, with 19 attacks in just a few days that left eight dead and more than 40 injured. What happened on Thursday exceeds in a matter of hours that balance of victims and confirms the magnitude of the threat that the Dissidencies of the FARC, the ELN and the heirs of paramilitarism in a country that fails to leave behind the spiral of violence represent.
