A car-bomb attack targets southwest Colombia a day after conservative president takes office

A car bomb ex­plod­ed Sat­ur­day in south­west­ern Colom­bia, the army said, a day af­ter con­ser­v­a­tive po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte Abelar­do de la Es­priel­la was sworn in as Colom­bia’s new pres­i­dent.

The army al­leged the at­tack was car­ried out by two dis­si­dent groups of the now-de­funct Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia, or FARC. The groups did not ac­cept the peace agree­ment that FARC signed a decade ago with the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment.

The ex­plo­sion took place at a toll plaza on the Pan-Amer­i­can High­way, the main road in the coun­try’s south­west. The army said two se­cu­ri­ty guards suf­fered mi­nor in­juries in the at­tack. One of the guards told au­thor­i­ties that the ex­plo­sion was caused by a ve­hi­cle that had been aban­doned by an in­di­vid­ual who fled on a mo­tor­cy­cle.

The at­tack took place on the road con­nect­ing the de­part­ments of Cau­ca and Valle del Cau­ca, whose cap­i­tal, Cali, host­ed Fri­day’s swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for de la Es­priel­la. Dur­ing his in­au­gur­al speech, he out­lined his se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy and warned il­le­gal groups that “they have two paths: sub­mit to the rule of law or con­front the se­cu­ri­ty forces.”

The army on Sat­ur­day said on so­cial me­dia that sol­diers were se­cur­ing the area and us­ing trained dogs to search for oth­er ex­plo­sive de­vices.

Min­is­ter of Trans­porta­tion El­sa Noguera con­demned the at­tack and said work was un­der­way to re­store traf­fic in the area.

“Colom­bia will not kneel be­fore vi­o­lence, nor will it al­low the de­struc­tion of the in­fra­struc­ture that con­nects our re­gions,” she wrote on so­cial me­dia.

Dozens of pris­on­ers sent to max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty pris­ons

Al­so on Sat­ur­day, de la Es­priel­la an­nounced the trans­fer of 117 pris­on­ers linked to the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s peace talks to eight max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty pris­ons. The mea­sure, ac­cord­ing to the coun­try’s cor­rec­tions agency, aims to “re­gain per­ma­nent con­trol of the pris­ons” and “con­tain any ca­pac­i­ty of crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions” to co­or­di­nate il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties from with­in pris­ons. De la Es­priel­la has re­ject­ed the di­a­logue with armed groups pro­mot­ed by his pre­de­ces­sor, Gus­ta­vo Petro.

With no pri­or po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, the 48-year-old de la Es­priel­la, a lawyer and busi­nessper­son, nar­row­ly de­feat­ed Iván Cepe­da, a pro­gres­sive sen­a­tor and Petro al­ly, in a June runoff elec­tion in a po­lar­ized po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

His term be­gins with a ro­bust op­po­si­tion led by Petro, who re­fused to ac­knowl­edge his vic­to­ry and in­sist­ed on al­leged fraud de­spite the of­fi­cial de­c­la­ra­tion from the elec­toral au­thor­i­ty and the pos­i­tive as­sess­ment from in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers. —CALI, Colom­bia (AP)

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Sto­ry by ASTRID SUÁREZ and GABRIELA MOLI­NA | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Gabriel­la Moli­na re­port­ed from Quito, Ecuador.