Bomb attack kills 19 on Colombia Pan-American Highway

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People gather at the site of a bomb attack at El Tunel, on the Popayan-Cali road, in Cajibio, Cauca department, Colombia. [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP] aljazeera.com

The highway bomb attack in Colombia's southwestern Cauca department killed 19 people and injured at least 38. [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP] aljazeera.com

People stand next to victims covered with white sheets at the site of the blast. [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP] aljazeera.com

The attack comes just over one month ahead of national elections, in which voters will pick a successor to President Gustavo Petro. [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP] aljazeera.com

Red Cross workers carry an injured person. [Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP] aljazeera.com

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A bomb blast tore through traffic on Colombia’s Pan-American Highway in Cauca on April 25, killing 19 people and injuring at least 38, according to Colombia’s forensic service. Authorities said attackers first blocked the road near Cajibío on the Popayán–Cali route, then detonated an explosive charge that left a crater in the roadway and wrecked buses and vans, Al Jazeera reports. The attack landed a little over a month before Colombia’s May 31 presidential election to replace President Gustavo Petro.

The government blamed dissident factions of the former FARC guerrilla movement that rejected the 2016 peace accord. Petro pointed to the commander known as Iván Mordisco, casting him as the face of a campaign that now mixes rural control with headline-grabbing attacks on transport corridors. The bombing followed an earlier attack a day before on a military base in Cali that injured two people, and the military said it recorded 26 attacks across Valle del Cauca and Cauca over two days. The pattern matters because the Pan-American Highway is not just a road; it is a commercial artery linking interior cities to ports and markets, and disrupting it imposes immediate costs on civilians and businesses that have little say over the armed groups competing for territory.

Colombia’s election calendar turns that disruption into political leverage. Candidates are already campaigning behind heavy security after last year’s killing of conservative frontrunner Miguel Uribe Turbay, and several leading contenders have reported death threats. A bombing that hits commuters and intercity buses does not need to capture a town to shape national debate: it can force candidates to promise rapid results, expand deployments, and redirect budgets toward visible force protection. Defence Minister Pedro Sánchez said authorities were increasing military and police presence in the affected areas, a response that tends to be measurable in checkpoints and patrols rather than in reopened courts, functioning land registries, or sustained protection for witnesses.

The dissidents’ choice of target also highlights how Colombia’s armed landscape has evolved since the peace deal. Fragmented groups can finance themselves through extortion, illegal mining, and drug routes while using sporadic mass-casualty attacks to demonstrate reach. When the state answers with temporary surges, insurgents can simply wait them out, shift to softer targets, or move across departmental lines. The election adds another layer: whichever coalition wins in May will inherit a security apparatus that must show progress quickly, even as the incentives for armed actors are to make the country look ungovernable.

By Sunday morning, Colombia’s legal medicine institute was examining 19 bodies from a single stretch of highway. The crater at El Túnel will be filled; the security details around candidates will remain.