Two police officers died Tuesday after explosives detonated at an airport on Colombia’s border with Venezuela, also killing the attacker, security officials said.
The assailant was blown up when explosives he was carrying detonated as he jumped the fence around the runway at Cucuta international airport.
The officers — David Reyes, 38, and William Bareno, 42 — were killed when “explosives experts went to scout out the area and identified a suitcase,” which also exploded, said Colonel Giovanni Madarriaga, head of the Cucuta police force.
Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano said the incident appeared to be an attack by the ELN, a hold-out rebel group that rejected the 2016 peace deal with the much larger FARC guerilla organization.
Police said it was unclear whether the explosives the unidentified attacker was carrying went off prematurely or if the assault was a suicide bombing, an unusual practice in the protracted Colombian conflict.
Police and security quickly surrounded the airport, which suspended all flights for seven hours.
Some nearby homes were also damaged by the explosions.
At least five attacks, including Tuesday’s, have shaken the region bordering Venezuela since the middle of the year.
In June, assailants fired rifles at the helicopter carrying President Ivan Duque, managing to hit the aircraft as it approached Cucuta, a town of some 800,000 inhabitants. No one was wounded in the attack.
Armed groups in the region, most of them former rebels, are fighting over profits from drug trafficking, taking advantage of the porous 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border between Colombia and Venezuela.
