Trending 
Nine people were killed and eight others wounded Friday in an explosion at a cocaine laboratory on Colombia’s Pacific coast, authorities said.
The blast occurred in the southwest Narino department, a cocaine-producing region home to the Indigenous Awa community and long plagued by armed groups.
Police Colonel John Jairo Urrea told local media that an initial investigation indicated a gas cylinder used in drug production had exploded.
The renegade National Coordinator Bolivarian Army, a faction of the former FARC guerrilla group whose members worked at the lab, said the fire was caused by “human error and the handling of gas cylinders,” adding that the facility “went up in flames in a matter of seconds.”
The group, which rejected the 2016 peace agreement that ended decades of conflict, remains in negotiations with President Gustavo Petro’s leftist government.
The Narino region has long been a key hub for cocaine trafficking to the United States, with drug networks strengthening control locally with support from Mexican cartels.
Tensions between Colombia and Ecuador flared this week after Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa imposed a 30 per cent tariff on Colombian imports, accusing Petro’s government of failing to curb cross-border drug trafficking. Petro retaliated with matching tariffs and defended his administration’s anti-drug efforts.
He is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump in Washington on February 3, following similar accusations from the US leader over drug trafficking.
