Undefined Explosive Device (UED) event in Bogota, La Estrada area, Colombia on Fri 10th May 2019

A powerful explosion rocked the La Estrada neighborhood in western Bogotá on Friday, leaving at least four people dead and 30 more injured, authorities said.

Among the injured, authorities confirmed 18 minors and 12 adults. The Bogotá Health Department has deployed 16 ambulances to the area.

'Four people have died as a result of this incident,' Bogotá Fire Chief Pedro Manosalva told reporters.

The incident occurred at 12:30 local time (17:30 GMT) in a three-story house where gunpowder fuses were apparently being manufactured for the practice of quoits.

Tejo, a traditional Colombian game that consists of detonating gunpowder fuses with a metal disc thrown from a distance, was declared in 2018 as an intangible cultural heritage of the country.

Manosalva pointed out that after the explosion there are still 'two possible risks' from the emergency related to 'hazardous materials', such as black powder and natural gas, and due to a 'structural failure' in the building.

The incident occurred in a residential and commercial area, near the Botanical Garden of Bogotá, and affected several nearby buildings, including a school and a kindergarten, whose students were assessed by the authorities and are also out of danger.

'I live on the third floor. I don't know what happened. I had just arrived at work. On the first floor there's a shop selling tejos (a type of quoits) and fireworks. The second and third floors are apartments. Fortunately, neither my son nor my wife were hurt,' Elkin Cipacón, one of the residents of the building, told reporters.

Images broadcast by television channels show the street filled with debris, as well as a truck overturned by the force of the explosion, which also hit an ambulance that was passing in front of the house at that moment.

The emergency is being handled by 35 firefighters, as well as members of the Civil Defense and the Police.

Experts from the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) of the Prosecutor's Office and the Judicial Investigation Section of the Police (Sijin) will conduct inspections to determine what caused the explosion.

As a result, the area was cordoned off and the roads near Avenida Rojas are closed to traffic. The commander of the Bogotá Fire Department, Pedro Manosalva, stated, "We are conducting our operations. We have already carried out an initial search with the city's agencies and are now performing verification work. We received an emergency call to the 123 line, with a report from a citizen about what happened. We haven't yet consolidated our findings, and we will submit a report once the search is complete."

The Idiger, the District Institute for Risk Management in Bogotá, is assessing the material damage in order to provide aid to those affected by the explosion.