Grenade explosion in Colombia leaves 10 people with head injuries

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Ten people were injured, one seriously, when a grenade exploded near a police station in the Colombian capital Bogota on Tuesday, authorities said.

Unknown people threw a grenade in Kennedy, a poor neighborhood in the south of the capital, before fleeing, Mayor Carlos Fernando Galan told reporters in the early morning hours.

The explosion injured two police officers and eight other people, he said.

One of the injured, a woman, was in serious condition, police chief Jose Gualdron said.

According to Galan, the attack was likely in retaliation for approximately 90 arrests recently made in the area in an operation targeting criminal organizations involved in extortion and drug trafficking.

Kennedy is home to the feared Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua” and several local gangs.

Also on Tuesday, an explosive attack in the coastal municipality of Timbiqui injured eight people and destroyed three houses, authorities said.

Timbiqui is located in the department of Cauca, the main southwestern coca-growing area of ​​the world’s largest cocaine producer.

Explosive attacks are not uncommon in a country struggling with the aftermath of six decades of armed conflict between the government, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels.

But in the capital of eight million people, which was the target of several deadly bombings at the height of the conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s, they are rare.

A car bomb detonated in 2003 by the now-defunct FARC guerrilla movement at a club in Bogota killed 36 people. A decade earlier, a similar attack ordered by drug lord Pablo Escobar had killed eight people and wounded more than 200 in a shopping mall.

Just five years ago, the ELN guerrilla movement, now in peace talks with the government, detonated a bomb near a police school in the capital, killing 23 people.

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