BOGOTA: A cocaine laboratory explosion killed nine people on Colombia’s Pacific coast, police said.

The blast happened in southwest Narino department in a cocaine-producing area inhabited by the Indigenous Awa people and rife with illegal armed groups.

Eight people were wounded.

These victims worked for the National Coordinator Bolivarian Army, a renegade faction of the now defunct FARC guerrilla group.

A preliminary investigation found a gas cylinder exploded while being used to make the drug, police colonel John Jairo Urrea told local media via video. “Due to human error and the handling of gas cylinders... the place went up in flames in a matter of seconds,” the renegade group said in a statement.

It rejected a 2016 peace agreement with the FARC that ended decades of fighting, and remains in talks with the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro. The region where the lab blew up has been crucial to cocaine trafficking to the United States for decades, and drug smugglers have strengthened their local control with the help of Mexican cartels.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2026