A demonstrator is detained by riot police during a protest on the second day of a national strike in Bogota on Friday. Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

Three officers were killed and seven other people injured after an attack on a police station in troubled southwestern Colombia on Friday, a local official told AFP.

“It was an attack on the police station with cylinders placed on a ramp that sadly leaves us three dead and seven wounded at the moment,” city secretary Jaime Asprilla said, referencing the use of explosive gas tanks.

Asprilla attributed the violence to armed groups operating in the troubled department of Cauca, and not to ongoing protests against President Ivan Duque.

Dissidents of the former FARC guerrilla movement who rejected the 2016 peace agreement, as well as the country’s last rebel National Liberation Army (ELN), and gangs of narcotics traffickers are fighting for control of Cauca.

The region, which is an epicentre of targeted killings, has extensive drug plantations and is a strategic narcotics route to the United States.

Agence France-Presse