Bomb (Air Delivered) event in Putumayo, Colombia on Tue 17th March 2026

A team of New York Times journalists on assignment at the Ecuador-Colombia border last week learned from local farmers about an alarming development: they told us that they had stumbled upon a large, unexploded bomb on a farm. The farmers, in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia, less than a mile from a river that divides Colombia from Ecuador, led us to a field. There, between coca crops and banana trees, lay a nearly 6-foot-long, cigar-shaped steel cylinder, its rusted olive-green paint peeling under a scorching sun. Farmers gathered around the munition, joking nervously. They inspected the large crater that the munition appeared to have left when it landed.