Aug. 22 (UPI) — Dissident factions of the FARC guerrilla movement involved in the drugs trade were being blamed for two separate attacks in Colombia that killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more.

Six people were killed and more than 60 were injured when a car bomb detonated Thursday outside a military flight academy in the western city of Cali, prompting mayor Alejandro Eder to declare martial law, temporarily ban large trucks from the city and offer a $10,000 reward for information about the attack.

Earlier, at least 12 police officers were killed when a police helicopter on an operation in the northwest of the country to destroy coca crops — the raw ingredient of cocaine — was brought down by a drone in a rural area near Medellin.

Calling the Cali bomb blast a “terrorist attack,” Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez laid responsibility at the feet of “the narco cartel, alias Mordisco,” referrring to Ivan Mordisco, head of the heavily armed Central General Staff (EMC), the largest of the “ex-FARC mafia” groups to emerge after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia laid down its arms in 2016 and a major player in narcotrafficking in the region.

“This cowardly attack against civilians is a desperate reaction to the loss of control over drug trafficking in Valle del Cauca, Cauca, and Narino, where the Public Force has neutralized much of this threat,” he said.

Sanchez also blamed EMC for the helicopter attack.

However, President Gustavo Petro initially blamed the Gulf Clan, a rival to the EMC and another former FARC splinter group, because the attack followed the seizure of 1.5 tons of cocaine in the heart of its home turf in the Uraba region of Antioquia, where the helicopter was downed.

Peto said the Cali bombing was carried out by the EMC’s Carlos Patino Front, saying it was in response to “an intense defeat” at the hands of government forces.

“More than 250,000 rounds of ammunition recovered by the State, five houses full of explosives, 200 rifle parts, etc. That was the center of this column’s activity in Honduras, El Tambo, down to Plateado. With that operation, we achieved a victory in the place where there is more coca leaf than anywhere else in the Cauca department, around 60% to 70% of the total,” he wrote in a post on X.

The MO of the attack allegedly was a match for the front, which frequently targets military and police bases as part of its war with the government. It has been blamed for a string of attacks across Cauca in March, using motorbike bombs, gunfire and drones armed with explosives.

Petro said that an extraordinary meeting of the security council in Cali had decided not to extend the state of emergency, opting instead for a decree to beef up measures “to further eliminate cocaine production and make it more difficult to export that cocaine from the Pacific coast.”