Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Catatumbo region has long been one of the hardest hit by armed conflict

Nine people have been killed in a gun attack in north-east Colombia.

Armed men on motorcycles arrived at a billiard hall in the village of El Tarra in Norte de Santander province and opened fire on those inside.

The region on the border with Venezuela has been hit by a feud between rival left-wing rebel groups but right-wing paramilitary groups are also active in the area.

Thousands of people have been displaced as a result of the fighting.

Monday's incident happened in Catatumbo, an area with minimal police and army presence where groups are vying for control of key drug routes to Venezuela.

The number of dead rose from eight to nine after one of the injured died in hospital.

Local media said they suspected two feuding left-wing rebel groups to be behind the shooting. The National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group and a breakaway faction, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), have been engaged in a deadly fight for the past four months.

But both groups have published statements denying any involvement.

The ELN said right-wing paramilitary groups were to blame but did not offer any evidence for its allegation.

Colombia's president-elect, Iván Duque, who will be sworn into office next week, took to Twitter to condemn the attack.

He wrote that justice and the rule of law had to reach "all corners of the country" and called on the authorities to catch those responsible.

Mr Duque was elected in June and one of his main campaign pledges was to increase security.

He has also expressed his opposition to peace talks between the ELN and the government saying he would make negotiations conditional on the ELN ceasing its attacks.

Colombia's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016 and some of its former fighters have since joined Congress.

But analysts say reaching a deal with the smaller ELN group could prove more difficult as it is less hierarchical and ideologically less flexible than the Farc.

In the meantime, the army has been deployed to Catatumbo to boost security. </s> The Colombian government on Friday blamed leftist ELN rebels for the car bomb that killed 21 people at a Bogota police cadet training academy.

Defense Minister Guillermo Botero, speaking from the presidential palace, described the Thursday bombing as “a terrorist attack committed by the ELN.”

Peace talks with the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s last major rebel group, broke down in 2018 under the former president Juan Manuel Santos. </s> BOGOTÁ, Colombia—The man accused of carrying out the bombing of a police academy that killed 20 people here was identified by Colombian authorities as a longtime member of a Marxist rebel group whose guerrilla fighters operate along the porous border with Venezuela.

The attack is likely to further complicate efforts to restart peace negotiations with the insurgent group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and heighten tensions with Venezuela, where Colombian officials say ELN commanders operate freely. </s> At least eight people were killed and another 10 wounded when a car bomb exploded Thursday at a police academy in the Colombian capital of Bogota, officials said.

The bomb went off in the General Santander Police School, said Mayor Enrique Penalosa. He said at least five people were killed but the Defense Ministry put the death toll at eight.

Authorities did not immediately say if the dead and wounded were police or civilians.

President Ivan Duque said he was returning to the capital from the west of the country, where he had been attending a security meeting.

“All Colombians reject terrorism and are united to confront it,” he said on Twitter.

Witnesses said they heard a loud blast that shattered windows in adjacent apartment buildings. Images on social media showed a burned vehicle surrounded by debris on the academy’s leafy campus.

There was no word on who might be behind the explosion, but attention was focused on leftist rebels from the National Liberation Army, which has been ramping up attacks on police targets in Colombia amid a standoff with the conservative Duque over how to re-start stalled peace talks.

The group known as the ELN was long considered a lesser military threat than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, whose 7,000 guerrilla fighters disarmed as part of a 2016 peace accord.

But in the wake of the peace accord, the Cuban-inspired insurgency has been gaining strength, especially along the eastern border with Venezuela, where it has carried out several kidnappings and bombings of oil pipelines that have hardened Duque’s resolve in refusing to resume peace talks.

Colombia grappled for decades with a civil war and residents of Bogota lived in fear of being caught in a bombing by leftist rebels or Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel.

But as Colombia’s conflict has wound down, security has improved and attacks have become less frequent after a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 2016.

Thursday’s bombing was the deadliest in Bogota since an explosion at the upscale Andino shopping mall in June 2017 killed three people, including a French woman, and injured another 11.

Police later arrested several suspected members of a far-left guerrilla group called the People Revolutionary’s Movement. </s> A police officer was killed and 30 other people were injured in a blast in Colombia’s capital on Sunday before a bullfighting event where protests had been expected, authorities and local media reported.

Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa described the explosion as a “criminal terrorist attack” aimed at police and vowed to capture those behind it, although no additional details were immediately provided.

Twenty-six of the wounded were officers, the district secretary for Security, Coexistence and Justice said in a statement. In a Twitter post from a hospital, Peñalosa said four of them lost an eye. </s> At least 21 people were killed and about 68 injured when a car bomb exploded inside a police training academy in Bogotá on Thursday in the deadliest attack in the Colombian capital in 16 years.

Public prosecutors said the bomber drove a pick-up truck packed with 80kg of explosives through checkpoints at the entrance to the academy. Video footage taken shortly afterwards showed the mangled wreckage of the vehicle surrounded by debris and bodies.

Most of the dead and injured were young police cadets, including some from neighbouring Ecuador and Panama.

President Iván Duque described the attack as “a despicable act that would not go unpunished” and named the bomber as José Rojas Rodríguez. Unconfirmed reports in local media said Mr Rojas, who died in the blast, had links to the country’s biggest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which has been at war with the state since the 1960s.

The Marxist ELN and the previous government opened peace talks in 2017 but they made little progress and, after coming to power last year, Mr Duque suspended negotiations, saying he would only resume them if the ELN ceased all criminal activities.

That has not happened. The ELN has regularly bombed oil pipelines and kidnapped people. On Wednesday it claimed responsibility for an attack on a helicopter in the north of the country a week ago. It took the three crew members hostage and said it had confiscated “a significant sum of money [from the helicopter’s cargo] that will be used in the revolutionary fight”.

Mr Duque stopped short of blaming the ELN for Thursday’s attack and said the police and prosecutors would give further details on Friday.

Some Colombians suggested dissident members of the Farc – the country’s biggest and deadliest guerrilla group until it reached a peace deal with the state in 2016 – might be to blame. Others have pointed the finger at organised crime groups that control Colombia’s lucrative cocaine industry.

The Farc – now a political party with representation in Congress – condemned the bombing while urging the government to avoid “warlike hysteria” and “military solutions” as it sought to track down the culprits.

The attack was the deadliest in Bogotá since 2003, when the Farc killed 36 people in a bombing of a nightclub. Thursday’s attack was the first car bomb assault in the Colombian capital since 2006.

Although the country is still plagued by violence, despite the historic 2016 peace deal, attacks in the capital city are rare. Most of the country’s worst atrocities are confined to remote areas and are linked to drug trafficking and disputes among rival criminal gangs. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019 </s> Venezuela nightclub stampede leaves at least 17 people dead, including eight minors

At least 17 people have been killed in a stampede in a Caracas nightclub in Venezuela after a person activated a tear gas grenade inside, Venezuela's interior minister Nestor Reverol says.

More than 500 people were at a party at the Los Cotorros club in the middle-class El Paraiso neighbourhood when the device went off at about 3:00am during a fight between several people, causing a stampede towards the exits, Mr Reverol said on state TV.

Eleven people suffocated to death when the gas filled the club's confined space, said Noris Villanueva, an autopsy assistant at the local Perez Carreno Hospital, who examined their bodies. It was not clear how the other six died.

Eight of those who died were younger than 18, Mr Reverol said, and five people were injured.

Mr Reverol said authorities had arrested seven people and the investigation was ongoing.

"The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, led by President Nicolas Maduro, deplores this unfortunate event," he said.

"We send our condolences to the families."

The club, a two-storey red brick building, was empty later on Saturday morning (local time) and there was no police presence outside.

He only knew his 19-year-old son Luis had died because he had seen him in the morgue. Another son of his had been hospitalised.

Homicide rates in Venezuela have shot up during the country's spiral into economic crisis and political meltdown and many Caracas residents refuse to go out at night due to security fears.

There were almost 27,000 violent deaths last year, making Venezuela proportionally the world's second most murderous nation after El Salvador, according to a local crime monitoring group.

The homicide rate in Caracas alone was 104 per 100,000 people, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence said.

Authorities say non-governmental groups inflate figures to create paranoia and tarnish Maduro's socialist Government. </s> Venezuela’s government says 17 people were killed Saturday after a nightclub brawl led to a stampede.

Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said eight minors were among those killed. Another five people were injured.

He said a tear gas device exploded after the fight broke out during a graduation celebration at “Los Cotorros” club, triggering the stampede.

He also said seven people were arrested, including the owner of the club and the person who is believed to have launched the explosive device. </s> Eight people have been killed in a gun attack in north-east Colombia.

Armed men on motorcycles arrived at a billiard hall in the village of El Tarra in Norte de Santander province and opened fire on those inside.

The region on the border with Venezuela has been hit by a feud between the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group and a break-away faction, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL).

Thousands of people have been displaced as a result of the fighting.

Who are the ELN rebels?
• The guerrilla group was founded in 1964 to fight against Colombia's unequal distribution of land and riches, inspired by the Cuban revolution of 1959
• Over the decades, the group has attacked large landholders and multinational companies, and repeatedly blown up oil pipelines
• To finance itself it has resorted to extortion, kidnappings and drug trafficking
• It has been strongest in rural areas

Colombia's president-elect, Iván Duque, who will be sworn into office next week, condemned the attack on Twitter.

He wrote that justice and the rule of law had to reach "all corners of the country" and called on the authorities to catch those responsible.

Mr Duque was elected in June and one of his main campaign pledges was to increase security.

He has also expressed his opposition to peace talks between the ELN and the government saying he would make negotiations conditional on the ELN ceasing its attacks.
• ELN peace talks: What are the challenges?

Monday's incident happened in Catatumbo, an area with minimal police and army presence. It has been hard hit by the battle between the ELN and the EPL for control over drug trafficking routes to Venezuela.

Human rights groups say the conflict has led to tens of thousands of students missing out on class as schools temporarily close their doors because of the escalating violence.

Colombia's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016 and some of its former fighters have since joined Congress.

But analysts say reaching a deal with the smaller ELN group could prove more difficult as it is less hierarchical and ideologically less flexible than the Farc.

In the meantime, the army has been deployed to Catatumbo to boost security.
A shooting at a billiard hall in El Tarra, Colombia, kills nine people. Local media blames a feud between two left-wing rebel groups, who both deny responsibility.