Authorities and criminalistics experts inspect the police station where a device exploded in Bogotá, this Saturday.MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA (MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA)
The FARC dissidents, small rebel groups that did not join the peace process, have claimed responsibility for an attack committed on Saturday in Bogotá in which two children died and more than 30 people were injured.
The attackers detonated an explosive charge hidden inside a suitcase at a neighborhood police station, hitting two minors who were nearby at the time.
In a video broadcast this Monday by a regional media outlet, the armed group assures that the attack was carried out to commemorate the death of Manuel Marulanda Vélez, alias Tirofijo, one of the founders of the FARC.
Marulanda died of a heart attack in 2008 in the middle of the jungle, without ever being captured.
The authorities, however, are cautious about the authorship.
Police Colonel Domingo López says he is not certain that the group that attributes it to him has committed it.
At the moment they are offering an $80,000 reward for information leading to those responsible.
The explosion blew up the facilities and took the lives of two minors, a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, whom doctors declared brain dead on Monday.
The attack was committed in Ciudad Bolívar, a poor neighborhood in the south of Bogotá.
Three weeks ago the same event occurred in another nearby police station, this time without any casualties, only damage to the windows and facades of the surrounding buildings.
Now the attack has turned deadly.
The FARC guerrilla demobilized in 2016 after half a century of war against the state and the paramilitary groups that emerged to confront it.
The bulk of the combatants, some 13,000, returned to civilian life.
Some commanders were unable to make that transition and were tempted to continue underground.
The political purpose of these combatants lost in remote areas of the country is not at all clear, to the point that they are no longer considered guerrillas, but rather armed groups dedicated to extortion and drug trafficking.
Crime is their way of life.
They have not found their place in the daily life of Colombia, which tries to normalize its daily life, without violence.
The process, however, has not been easy.
These groups still control some parts of the territory and their combat experience makes them fearsome enemies.
The most important faction is commanded by Gentil Duarte, a cruel warlord who has recorded several albums of Mexican ranchera music.
The low-intensity warfare that has affected the country for almost half a century has been fought mostly in rural areas, although it has at times increased its level of action.
Bogotá has been hit sporadically.
“We are saddened by the death of Ivanna Rangel (the girl who died on Monday), a victim of the cowardly terrorism of the FARC dissidents.
With deep pain, we express our condolences to her family.
We will not rest until we find those responsible for this atrocious attack that mourns the country,” the president, Iván Duque, tweeted.
According to a regional media outlet, the 33rd Front of the FARC, through a certain Audrey, attributes the attack in a recording and explains that all units had been given the order to carry out military, propaganda and cultural activities.
At the end of the video, she points out that they did not intend to attack civilians: "It was not our intention."
The policeman Jhoan Camilo Moreno, on duty that night at the sentry box, comments in a video that the institution has made public about the nonsense of the death of these two children: "They are not to blame for anything."
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region.