Eight Injured in Colombia Bomb Attack

Eight people were hurt in a bomb attack against a police convoy in Bogota on Thursday, authorities in Colombia said.

Five officers and three civilians were injured when explosives that had been planted on the side of a road detonated just as the police convoy was passing by.

Officials said a motorcycle that was part of the convoy caught fire as a result of the blast.

"There is no doubt that we were dealing here with a terrorist attack against the police," Metropolitan Police commander Humberto Guatibonza said at a press conference after the blast.

Guatibonza said the injured officers "fortunately are out of danger," and were expected to survive the attack.

He linked the bombing to a series of similar explosions that have rocked the capital city in recent months, many of which have been blamed on the ELN rebel group.

The bombing "has a strong similarity to ones committed by ELN in the past," Guatibonza said, in terms of the bomb's general construction, as well as the location and the manner in which it was placed.

He added that the problem is getting worse.

"We think it's something that's escalating," Guatibonza said.

The ELN, the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest leftist rebel group, in January entered into preliminary talks with Bogota about joining negotiations to end an internal conflict that has left 220,000 dead and displaced 5.3 million.

Further along in peace negotiations with the government is Colombia's largest insurgency, the FARC rebel group.

Those talks, which got underway in 2012, have produced partial accords between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the government, but so far have yet to yield a definitive deal to end their half-century-long conflict.