Colombia on edge as attacks come just days after assassination attempt on conservative presidential hopeful.

Southwest Colombia has been rocked by a series of explosions and gun attacks near police stations that have left at least four people dead, according to police, an apparent coordinated attack that authorities have blamed on rebel groups.

The attacks hit Cali – the country’s third-largest city – and the nearby towns of Corinto, El Bordo, and Jamundi, targeting police stations and other municipal buildings with car and motorcycle bombs, rifle fire and a suspected drone, the head of police Carlos Fernando Triana told local radio station La FM on Tuesday.

The bombings came just days after the attempted assassination of presidential hopeful Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay at a campaign rally in the capital Bogota, allegedly by a 15-year-old hitman, an attack that rattled a nation with a dark past of assassinations.

In Corinto, an AFP journalist witnessed the tangled wreckage of a car that had exploded next to a scorched and badly damaged municipal building.