Colombian authorities have seized and safely deactivated a commercial drone carrying improvised explosive materials just 5.4 kilometers from Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport and the nearby Military Air Transport Command (CATAM), raising fresh security concerns in the capital three weeks before the country’s May 31 presidential election.

The discovery marks a significant escalation from recent unauthorized drone sightings that twice forced temporary flight suspensions at El Dorado, Colombia’s busiest airport, and highlights growing fears that tactics once largely confined to conflict zones in the southwest and Catatumbo region are now reaching the capital.

According to preliminary police and military reports, the device was located in the locality of Kennedy, near the Río Bogotá, after a security alert issued by prosecutors in Popayán, Cauca, prompted specialized units of the Colombian Air Force (FAC) and National Police to track suspicious coordinates in southern Bogotá.

Authorities found what appeared to be a makeshift encampment before locating the commercial drone, its battery and an explosive charge separated from the fuselage.

Anti-explosives officers later confirmed the device had been modified with a non-conventional fiber-optic guidance system, a method increasingly used by illegal armed groups to evade electronic signal jammers designed to disable unmanned aircraft.

Investigators said the drone carried approximately 258 grams of C4 explosive material inside a PVC tube fitted with an improvised detonator.

The device was safely neutralized by National Police explosives experts and transferred to the Attorney General’s Office – Fiscalía General – for forensic analysis and the opening of a criminal investigation.

Authorities have not publicly identified those responsible or confirmed the intended target, but officials noted the location placed the drone within minutes of both El Dorado International Airport and CATAM, one of Colombia’s most strategic military aviation facilities.

Security analysts say the use of fiber-optic spools as a guidance mechanism resembles tactics recently documented in Catatumbo and southwestern Colombia, particularly among the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla and FARC dissident factions under the command of alias “Iván Mordisco.”

A similar drone equipped with the same system was discovered in Popayán on April 25 during a wave of attacks blamed on FARC dissidents in Cauca, while another was found the same day in Villavicencio, the departmental capital of Meta.

The appearance of such devices in Bogotá has raised alarm among security officials, particularly given the proximity to civilian and military aviation infrastructure.

Pilots and aviation experts warn that even small commercial drones can cause catastrophic damage if they collide with an aircraft during takeoff or landing. A drone carrying explosives near an airport runway significantly increases the potential for a large-scale tragedy.

The discovery also comes at a politically sensitive moment, with Colombia entering the final weeks before its presidential election on May 31, as security and public order remain dominant campaign issues amid rising violence in the departments of Antioquia, Chocó, and Norte de Santander.

The leftist government of President Gustavo Petro has faced intense criticism over deteriorating security conditions, particularly following road bombing attributed to illegal armed groups in Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Nariño and Catatumbo, where the use of drones for surveillance and attacks has become increasingly common.

Last month, drone sightings near El Dorado airport twice forced authorities to suspend all air operations, disrupting domestic and international flights and exposing vulnerabilities near the country’s principal air gateway.

On April 30, Aerocivil halted airport operations after the Colombian Aerospace Force confirmed the presence of a drone in the Engativá district near the airport perimeter. Two aircraft were forced to carry out missed approaches, including an international LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 arriving from Santiago, Chile, while another domestic flight was diverted to Armenia, Quindío.

Just two days earlier, on April 28, another drone was detected near El Dorado, triggering a 45-minute suspension of takeoffs and landings while military personnel deployed anti-drone systems and visual searches.

Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez later confirmed that operations had been temporarily canceled because of the possible drone sighting, although no confirmed target was found.

Aerocivil has repeatedly warned that unauthorized drone activity near airports represents a grave threat to aviation safety and can result in criminal prosecution.

Thursday’s discovery, however, suggests the threat may extend far beyond operational disruption.

For Bogotá, the concern is no longer simply rogue recreational drones interfering with airport traffic, but the possibility that explosive-equipped devices linked to Colombia’s armed conflict are now within reach of the nation’s capital – and its most critical infrastructure.

As the civilian death toll rises to 21, here’s a closer look at conflict in southwest Colombia.

Colombian armed group the Estado Mayor Central (EMC) has admitted its role in the massive roadside bomb near the small town of Cajibío that killed 21 civilians and injured 60 others in Cauca on April 25, the worst such attack in the country’s recent history.

In a message, the EMC said “we cannot hide or justify the error” which resulted from buried explosives aimed at military targets but which they detonated in a queue of vehicles held at a roadblock.

See also: Dissident bomb kills 20 civilians at roadblock in southwest Colombia

Cajibío was one of 37 coordinated attacks over five days in Cauca and the neighboring Valle department, conflict analyst Gerson Arias of Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP) told The Bogotá Post.

“This was a message of terror from the EMC who wanted to show their military superiority in the region,” he maintained.

And despite admitting its error, the EMC showed no signs of slowing its offensive in recent days. On Thursday police experts defused 600 kilos of explosives found wedged in a drainage tunnel near Piendamó, Cauca, potentially avoiding a fresh tragedy.

Civilian targets

Military sources told news media after the Cajibío bomb that the EMC fighters had likely set a trap on the Via Panamericana, the main route linking Cali and Popayán. They buried the massive bomb then forced trucks to block the highway before retreating to the wooded hillsides as a long queue of traffic formed on the busy road.

When troops arrived in their heavily armored tanquetas – fortified troop carriers with turret guns – they sensed a trap and parked several hundred meters from the blocked road, then moved on foot through the wooded hillside to engage the guerrillas.

An EMC fighter then remotely detonated the roadside bomb striking 15 civilian vehicles, killing 21 people and injuring 60. The combatants escaped in the aftermath.

Arias believes that despite their original plan to kill military targets, the EMC fighters chose to blow up civilian vehicles: “They decided to detonate; it was a decision by the EMC.”

The resulting carnage was one of the highest civilian death tolls from a single incident in Colombian history, last seen on this scale in 2002 when a gas cylinder packed with high explosives detonated in a church in Bojayá, Chocó, killing 79 local people.

The deadly nature of homemade bombs, or ‘IEDs’ as they are called in military parlance (Improvised Explosive Devices), was shown again in August last year when 13 policemen were killed in Antioquia by a buried cylinder bomb that destroyed a helicopter.

Armed groups growing

Who was behind the Cajibío bomb? The EMC are remnants of the FARC’s 6^th Front, formed by guerrillas that rejected the 2016 peace process, now called ‘disidencias’, or dissidents.

The EMC still uses the FARC name, uniforms and logo, and its leaders mimic the ideology of former FARC icons such as ‘Tirofijo’ insisting it is a “political insurgent force”.

Last week Colombia’s defense minister was swift to blame the EMC’s Frente Jaime Martínez which is under the command of alias Marlon, a former FARC commander freed from jail in 2016 as a signatory to the peace deal but who returned to the fray.

The Cauca-based Frente Jaime Martínez numbered around 600 combatants, one of the most powerful units in the Bloque Occidental of the EMC, explained Arias. FIP data showed the EMC numbering around 3,300 fighters spread across southern Colombia, an estimated growth of 23% during 2025. Around 60% of those were concentrated in southwest Colombia.

“Cauca is a strategic point for illicit mining and narcotrafficking, all the armed groups are seeking dominance, and this means intensive recruitment of young people into their ranks,” said Arias.

The mountainous department is a heartland of Colombia’s illicit economies, straddling both the Andean cordillera and the Pacific lowlands with topography perfect for both hiding rebel armies and providing lush hillsides for coca crops and marijuana.

Cocaine production needs large cropping areas, 32,000 hectares of coca bushes covered the Cauca hillsides by the last count (Indepaz, 2024).  And since Spanish colonial times the lowland riverbeds have provided a source of gold, today mined illegally with destructive heavy machinery paid for by cocaine profits.

Inland links

Cauca has no proper roads linking the highlands coast, though there are numerous clandestine ‘conflict tracks’, mule trails and navigable rivers to the Pacific.  A labyrinth of mangrove swamps provides cover for boats running an estimated 70% of Colombia’s cocaine product to central America and beyond.

The department’s east is formed by the ‘Cauca Boot’, a foot-shaped chunk of mountainous terrain long held by rebel groups which penetrates as far as the Caquetá jungle linking the eastern Llanos plains and Amazon region to the Pacific coast.

This corridor created a vital link between the interior of the country and the EMC’s Bloque Oriental, in the eastern plains and jungles, Arias told The Bogotá Post.

Cauca was also bisected by the Via Panamericana, the highway running down the mountain and linking three main cities – Cali, Popayán, Pasto – and on to Ecuador to the south. This neuralgic route was easily blocked or attacked by armed groups, he said.

Combat units like the Frente Jaime Martínez would likely have autonomy from the top leadership of the EMC and could plan and execute their own actions, explained Arias.

“They articulate and communicate with the EMC structure, but are not necessarily subordinate,” he said.

Failed peace plan

The EMC was originally included in Petro’s sweeping Paz Total (Total Peace) initiative in 2022, but after repeated infractions by the armed group – including murdering four indigenous children the group had forcibly recruited – talks broke down in 2024.

In October that year Petro called off the talks and ordered the military to attack EMC heartlands in Cauca. The ensuing Operation Perseus sparked intense combat around the town of El Plateado in the Micay Canyon, historically a hideout for the FARC and now an EMC stronghold.

FIP has been critical of Paz Total and in February this year published data showing that armed groups had used the façade of peace talks to expand both their ranks and territory.

See also: Peace plan has caused more conflict, says thinktank.

According to Arias, Petro’s government failed to understand the strategic importance Cauca had to the armed groups, as well as underestimating the control the EMC had over local communities.

Many rural families were reliant on coca growing and gold mining in a region lacking state presence: “There’s been a historical process of armed groups coopting civilian and ethnic communities,” said Arias.

This was evident in the civilian uprisings – asonadas – against state forces leading to incidents such as the 57 soldiers forcibly detained by a community in El Tambo in June 2025.

But the armed groups also preyed on the host population, he said, particularly victimizing the indigenous communities which make up 20% of Cauca’s population. EMC commanders frequently forced indigenous youth to join their ranks, creating conflict with the Nasa and Misak people of the area.

Contacts ofThe Bogotá Post living in rural Cauca – who declined to be named – said that armed groups controlled communities with networks of spies and even used surveillance drones to monitor movements.

A person needing to travel in or out of the zone controlled by a particular armed group needed permission and had to carry ID cards issued by community councils under orders of the armed group.

Anyone rejecting these restrictions was threatened and displaced, and particularly social leaders who spoke out against the armed groups risked being assassinated: 12 in Cauca so far in 2026.

The Cauca cauldron

Strength in numbers was a contributing factor to EMC aggression in the region, said Arias. FIP data showed a steady increase in armed attacks against both civilian structures and military targets since 2016, peaking at 175 recorded incidents last year (see graph below).

Not all events involved state forces; the EMC was under pressure from rival groups such as the ELN, Segunda Marquetalia and EMBF dissidents. All want a share of Cauca’s illicit economies.

And while waging a conflict of asymmetric warfare, often resorting to terror tactics, the EMC was also demonstrating military dominance with armed drones that put the Colombian military on the back foot.

“Out of 500 attacks, 408 were using drones,” said Arias. “The conflict is changing direction, but state strategies are not adapting to respond to this new technology.”

But beyond a military response, the state needed to implement a strategy of well-planned and sustainable social interventions to stem the resurgence of the armed groups.

In Cauca, this was a huge challenge, said Arias. For now, groups like the EMC were sticking to illicit gold and narcotrafficking, even if it meant constant conflict to deter and weaken state forces.

“They are on the attack to show they are the bosses,” he said.

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