Deborah Akinyosoye
A cocaine laboratory explosion killed nine people on Friday on Colombia’s Pacific coast, police said.
The blast happened in the southwest Narino department in a cocaine-producing area inhabited by the Indigenous Awa people and rife with illegal armed groups. Eight people were wounded.
These victims worked for the National Coordinator of the Bolivarian Army, a renegade faction of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla group.
A preliminary investigation found a gas cylinder exploded while being used to make the drug, police colonel John Jairo Urrea told local media via video.
“Due to human error and the handling of gas cylinders… the place went up in flames in a matter of seconds,” the renegade group said in a statement.
It rejected a 2016 peace agreement with the FARC that ended decades of fighting, and remains in talks with the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro.
The region where the lab blew up has been crucial to cocaine trafficking to the United States for decades, and drug smugglers have strengthened their local control with the help of Mexican cartels.
Ecuador’s conservative President Daniel Noboa launched a trade war with Colombia on Wednesday by imposing a 30 percent tariff on imports from its neighbor. He accused leftist President Gustavo Petro’s government of not doing enough to curb drug trafficking along their shared border.
Petro hit back with the same tariff and defended his efforts against illegal drug traffickers.
After facing similar accusations from US President Donald Trump over the past year, Petro is slated to travel to Washington for meetings with his US counterpart on February 3.