Ecuador seizes bomb-making material headed to Colombia
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador seized a huge shipment of bomb-making materials being transported in a truck from the country’s Peruvian border to Colombia, where it was intended to be used in “terrorist acts,” police said Sunday.
The seizure comes as Colombia endures its worst security crisis in decades, with two guerrilla attacks — one of which used a truck bomb — killing 19 people and wounding dozens on Thursday.
The Ecuadoran police said they seized 3,750 cartridges of explosive emulsion and 15 miles (25,000 meters) of detonating cord in an operation on the Colombian border.
“We identified explosive material that was intended to be used to carry out terrorist acts in Colombia,” the police said on X.
A man and woman were arrested during the operation. Images from the scene showed the material was wrapped in plastic bags inside the small truck.
The explosive materials were being transported in a truck that left the southwest Ecuadoran province of El Oro — which borders Peru — to the northern Carchi province near the Colombian border, where the operation took place.
The police made the discovery during a routine check in the town of San Gabriel.
“After an exhaustive search, it was discovered that the vehicle was carrying a large quantity of hidden explosives,” the police said in a statement.
The discovery came after a truck bomb exploded on a busy street in the tropical Colombian city of Cali on Thursday, killing six civilians and wounding more than 60 people.
Just hours earlier, guerrillas had attacked a police operation destroying coca crops, which are used to produce cocaine, near the city of Medellin in Colombia’s northwest. A police helicopter was shot down, and 13 officers were killed.
The authorities blamed the attacks on rival guerrilla groups that split from the once-powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in rejection of a 2016 peace accord.
Many of Colombia’s armed groups — once based on leftist or right-wing ideologies — are now de facto drug cartels, funding themselves through the lucrative cocaine trade.
Two guerrillas were arrested on Saturday over the Cali truck bomb attack.
