Two explosions at the airport in the city of Cúcuta, Colombia, killed two police officers and the author of one of the attacks on Tuesday (14). The country’s president, Ivan Duque, called the event a “terrorist attack”.
The aggressor managed to cross the fence that gives access to the runway and at that moment the first explosion occurred, killing him, police said.
“Later, our explosives experts, while reconnaissing the area, identified a suitcase that also exploded and caused the death of two of them,” said Cúcuta police chief, Colonel Giovanni Madarriaga.
Cúcuta is in the northern state of Santander, on the border with Venezuela. Operations at the Camilo Daza airport terminal were suspended.
On his Twitter account, Duque said he repudiated the “cowardly terrorist attack that took place in the city” and added that the Ministry of Defense, the Military Summit, the Army and the police are taking coordinated action to find those responsible.
Defense Minister Diego Molano condemned the action, which he also described as “terrorist” and suggested that it could have been planned from within Venezuela, where, according to him, Colombian rebel groups operate.
“We reject and condemn this terrorist act, which, as always, was aimed at destabilization,” he said.
Molano recalled that the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the extinct guerrillas that signed a peace agreement in 2016, operate in and around Cúcuta.
These organizations “often plan, finance and carry out their attacks on Venezuelan territory and then, unfortunately, seek to perpetrate them on Colombian territory,” the minister told Caracol television news.
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