The attack in the capital, Bogotá, left at least eight dead, the Defense Ministry said.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A car bomb exploded in front of a Bogotá police academy Thursday morning, killing at least eight people, wounding 23 and spreading fear about a revival of Colombia’s violent past.
Images from the academy in the southern part of the Colombian capital showed the remains of a large explosion that had blackened the streets, left buildings pockmarked with shrapnel and even blew the leaves off nearby trees and the tiles off rooftops.
Dazed police officers wandered the site of the academy, the Santander General School, looking for survivors. There were fears that the casualty figures, reported by the Defense Ministry, could rise.
“My solidarity is with our police officers faced with this terrorist act,” the mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, said on his Twitter account.
Iván Duque, Colombia’s president, who had been away from the capital, called the bombing a “miserable terrorist act” and said that he was returning to direct the investigation. “All Colombians reject terrorism and are united to confront it,” he said on Twitter .
The car bombing rattled nerves in Bogotá, not only for the number of dead, but also for its significance: Such attacks were long the norm in the capital as drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas waged aggressive terror campaigns in the city with car bombs.
But it has been years since there was an attack of this kind in Bogotá.
