The death toll from a devastating bombing on a highway in southwestern Colombia has risen to at least 20, according to the governor of the Cauca region. Governor Octavio Guzman said Monday that the victims included 15 women and five men.

Another 36 people were injured, with three remaining in intensive care and five minors out of danger, Guzman said in a social media update. Some media reports put the death toll at 21 as of late Monday.

The explosion occurred near a tunnel on the Pan-American Highway, close to the town of Cajibio. A dozen of the victims came from a nearby village, where hundreds of mourners held a vigil on Monday, dressed in white and waving white sheets and balloons as a sign of peace.

“Please, no more death, no more violence,” Joao Valencia, 42, a relative of a woman killed in the attack, told AFP, holding up her picture. “These kinds of women should die of old age, not have their lives taken from them in such a tragic way,” he added.

The bombing is one of the deadliest attacks in Colombia since the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) bombed a Bogota nightclub in 2003, killing 36 people.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro blamed a “narco-terrorist group” for the attack, specifically naming a group led by Nestor Vera, commonly known as Ivan Mordisco, one of Colombia’s most wanted men. Mordisco is a dissident former member of FARC, which signed a landmark peace agreement with the government in 2016.

The attack comes just over a month before national elections, in which voters will pick a successor to President Gustavo Petro. Security is a central issue in the May 31 presidential election, with a suspect recently arrested in the assassination of young conservative presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last June.

Source: www.aljazeera.com