Colombian president says rebels responsible for highway bombing killing 14 people

A bombing on a Colombian highway has left at least 14 people dead and dozens seriously injured, including minors, which authorities linked to guerrilla insurgents.

Videos shared from the scene showed damaged vehicles and debris strewn across the road in the southern Cauca region.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro blamed the attack on rebels linked to dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), one of the longest-running insurgency groups in Latin America.

Political violence has re-emerged in recent years after peace talks between Farc and the government in 2016 collapsed, despite the president's strategy of "total peace".

"Those who carried out this attack... are terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers," Petro said on X.

"I want our very best soldiers to confront them," he added.

Posting a video on X of upturned vehicles and craters littered along the highway in Cauca, local Governor Octavio Guzman described the bombing as "indiscriminate".

"Cauca cannot continue to face this barbarity alone," Guzman wrote.

Witnesses told the AFP news agency that the blast was so powerful they were knocked back several metres.

A spate of smaller attacks have also been reported in Cauca since Friday, the governor added, including one that targeted a military base in the city of Cali that injured two people.

Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez said a bus filled with explosives failed to detonate earlier in the day in the Cauca region, saying it was carried out by members of a drug-trafficking cartel.

The latest attacks come one month out from Colombia's presidential election on 31 May.

Petro, himself a former guerrilla fighter, has been pursuing a controversial peace strategy with various armed factions which has seen intermittent ceasefires and periods of relatively little violence. His term will end later this year.

Members of Farc who initially rejected the 2016 peace deal have attempted to stall negotiations with Petro's government over recent years.

Right-wing candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay assassinated by a 15-year-old boy in June at a rally in the capital Bogotá, dying two months later in hospital.

Leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, a leading proponent Petro's policy of negotiating with armed groups, is currently ahead in opinion polls.