Blast near police station on Colombia’s border with Venezuela leaves 1 dead and 11 injured

A car bomb detonated outside a police station in Los Patios, a town on Colombia's border with Venezuela, on Tuesday night, resulting in one civilian death and eleven injuries, officials reported. The incident occurred around midnight in the Cucuta metropolitan area. Police officers are among the wounded. President Abelardo de la Espriella vowed that the government would pursue the perpetrators, stating, "Colombia will not yield to terrorism," in a post on social media platform X. In a similar attack last month, an explosion outside a police station in Cucuta killed a police dog and injured eleven officers, which was attributed to Colombia's largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army.

The region around Cucuta has long been a battleground for drug gangs and rebel factions vying for control of smuggling routes into Venezuela. Although a peace agreement signed a decade ago between Colombia's government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has reduced violence in many parts of the country, crime has escalated in some areas as smaller groups contend with each other and attack the Colombian government as they attempt to seize territory previously held by the FARC.

President de la Espriella, who took office in August, has vowed to combat crime and has recently abandoned peace talks that the government had been conducting with various rebel groups.