Suspicious package destroyed with controlled explosion in Cajicá, Cundinamarca

On April 21, in the municipality of Cajicá (Cundinamarca), the police authorities ordered several streets to be closed to investigate and discard a possible package bomb, which would put the inhabitants of the sector at risk.

It was the inhabitants of the municipality themselves who alerted the authorities, who immediately contacted the Bogotá Anti-Explosives Unit.

The area, according to the Cajican authorities, had to be cordoned off for several hours while experts arrived in this type of suspicious package. This caused several citizens to complain about the slow response of those responsible for controlling this type of element.

“After three hours of threat of explosive device in Cajicá nothing came the anti-explosive equipment of the police. This is the reaction after what happened in the CAI of the high arborizadora in Bogotá,” Andrés Cifuentes Waldmann reported to Semana.

After the arrival of the anti-explosives team, the determination was made to detonate in a controlled manner the abandoned suitcase on the Gran Colombia de Cajicá highway, according to El Observador.

A video circulates on social networks in which you can see how the controlled charge detonates on the street.

The investigation by the authorities determined that there were only old clothes inside the abandoned suitcase, so it was immediately ruled out that they were explosive elements.

On April 2, a macabre act of violence was discovered in the vicinity of the National Vote sector, in the center of the Colombian capital, where the authorities were alerted by the community, after a package they feared was an explosive was abandoned in the area.

RCN Radio reported that the alert was given because there are fears among the inhabitants of the city that a terrorist attack such as the one that occurred recently in the CAI of Arborizadora Alta, in the town of Ciudad Bolivar, south of Bogotá, will occur again, resulting in the death of two children and more than 30 people injured.

In the face of the emergency, anti-explosive experts from the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) of the Attorney General's Office arrived at the scene, who were responsible for verifying the package that had been left under some garbage cans exactly on 12th street with carrera 16, as reported in the television news report Noticias RCN.

Initially, to rule out that it had content that would detonate, they sent a robot with which it was confirmed that it was not a danger to the agents carrying out the verification.

But when they checked it manually, they got the macabre surprise that it was the lifeless body of a person.

The Colombian Red Cross, based on the latest report “Humanitarian Challenges 2022 Colombia” published by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), reports that in 2021 alone there were 486 victims of weapons contamination in the country. This means that the said number of people were victims of either anti-personnel mines, weapons and/or explosive devices.

On April 4, on the International Day of Awareness against Anti-Personnel Mines, the entity called for the protection of life and dignity.

“In 2021, there were 486 victims of gun contamination in Colombia, the highest number in five years. Of the 32 departments that make up the Colombian territory, 21 report damage due to weapons pollution with a total of 131 affected municipalities. The above scenario clearly establishes the need to combine efforts to mitigate the humanitarian impact on Colombia generated by this scourge,” said the Red Cross.

It was noted that in recent years there has been a worrying exponential increase in cases of victims of mines, weapons or explosives. In 2017, 57 victims were identified, then 244 were reported in 2018, 353 in 2019 and 392 in 2020.

KEEP READING: