Car bomb wounds 19 in town in western Colombia

CORINTO: Colombian President Ivan Duque visited the western town of Corinto on Saturday, after 19 people were wounded in a car bomb explosion the previous day.

Footage showed a street filled with debris, including a destroyed car and motorcycle.

Duque described the perpetrators behind the attack as a group of dissidents whose "cowardly acts against the people are unforgivable."

"They have only one path left: either they surrender or we will fight them forcefully," he insisted.

Witnesses said the bomb exploded near Corinto's municipal government building and within walking distance of a police station.

The town's mayor was not in the building at the time, but three municipal employees were in critical condition and have been taken to hospitals in city of Cali, said deputy mayor Leonardo Rivera.

The town of 30,000 people has long been troubled by fighting between the Colombian army and rebel groups that traffic cocaine and hide in the nearby Andes Mountains, but has not reported bombings since 2011.