Bomb blast on Colombia highway leaves 21 dead amid pre-election violence

The local governor has described the bombing as the area’s ‘most brutal and ruthless attack against the civilian population in decades’. Photograph: Ernesto Guzman/EPA

The death toll in a Colombian highway bombing blamed on cocaine-trafficking rebels has risen to 21, the government said on Monday, in the country’s worst attack on civilians in decades and just ahead of elections.

The attack on Saturday left 56 injured and buses and vans mangled on the Pan-American Highway, in the restive south-western Cauca department.