BOGOTA: A five-year-old girl on Monday became the second child to die following an explosive attack on a police station in Bogota over the weekend, authorities said.
A 12-year-old boy died on Sunday after the bomb, left in a suitcase, exploded in the poor Ciudad Bolivar neighborhood of the Colombian capital, leaving 33 people injured.
“It is with great sadness that we must report that the little five-year-old girl, Ivanna Salome Rangel Molina, died this morning,” Bogota mayor Claudia Lopez said on Twitter.
Rangel had been in hospital since Saturday “in a very serious condition” after being hit in the head by shrapnel.
Daniel Duque, 12, was killed after going out to a shop.
“He was in that place at the wrong time... This war that we’re living through, which shouldn’t be like this, always punishes the most innocent,” his mother Gloria Buitrago told Colombian television.
While the bomb — which was “set off from distance” — targeted a police station, it also affected a group of children playing nearby, said Defense Minister Diego Molano.
Seven children and two police officers were injured in the blast.
Bogota police chief Eliecer Camacho Jimenez said the explosive device was identical to one used in an attack on March 5 on another police station in Ciudad Bolivar, a neighborhood that is home to many people displaced by Colombia’s ongoing conflict over drug trafficking.
Police said dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which in 2016 laid down its weapons and formed a political party, had claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Ivan Duque denounced the “terrorist attack” and offered a reward of $80,000 for information on those responsible.
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