Images circulating on social media show several officers being treated for injuries while laid out on the rubble- and blood-strewn ground. The rebels long funded their insurgency by playing a dominant role in Colombia's criminal underworld and their retreat has left valuable drug smuggling routes up for grabs. "Colombia needs to make an enormous collective effort to emerge from the swamp of violence, death and fear," the former rebels said in a statement. In a separate, apparently unrelated incident, a car bomb exploded after midnight Friday outside a police station in Ecuador, near the border with Colombia. While political violence from Colombia has long had spillover effect on northern Ecuador such attacks in the far-more-peaceful nation are rare.

Source: ABC News January 27, 2018 17:03 UTC