A car bomb attack targeting a police station in southwest Colombia killed two people Wednesday in a region plagued by remnants of a guerrilla group.
The attack came a day after Bogota and a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which disarmed in 2017, announced they would observe a ceasefire and hold peace talks next month.
"The terrorist attack against the Timba police station in Cauca, left two dead and two injured, and was carried out with a car bomb," police official Tito Castellanos wrote on social media.
He said police continued to be "harassed" by armed groups in the area.
Without referring to the attack, President Gustavo Petro said on social media that "actions" of the dissident group, which calls itself the Central General Staff (EMC), were a retaliation for military operations against drug crops in Cauca.
"Our objective remains ... I have ordered an even bigger police and military presence in Cauca," he wrote.
Petro took office last August with a vow to bring "total peace" to a country battered by decades of civil conflict between the state and various left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
The EMC is made up of former FARC fighters who rejected a 2016 peace agreement between the government and the Marxist rebels.
The EMC has steadily increased its presence in territories formerly occupied by the FARC and largely abandoned by government forces.
It is said by the government to be involved in cocaine trafficking, illegal mining and attacks on Colombian troops.
According to official data, the group had about 3,500 armed members by the end of last year.