The blast occurred in the southwestern department of Nariño, a major cocaine-producing area inhabited by the Indigenous Awa people and plagued by illegal armed groups. Eight other people were wounded.

The victims were working for the National Coordinator Bolivarian Army, a renegade faction of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla group. A preliminary investigation found that a gas cylinder exploded while being used to manufacture the drug, police Colonel John Jairo Urrea told local media in a video statement.

“Due to human error and the handling of gas cylinders … the place went up in flames in a matter of seconds,” the renegade group said in a statement. The group rejected a 2016 peace agreement with the FARC that ended decades of fighting and remains in talks with the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro.

The region where the lab exploded has been crucial to cocaine trafficking to the United States for decades, and drug smugglers have strengthened their local control with the help of Mexican cartels.

Separately, Ecuador’s conservative President Daniel Noboa launched a trade war with Colombia on Wednesday by imposing a 30 percent tariff on imports from its neighbor. He accused President Petro’s leftist government of not doing enough to curb drug trafficking along their shared border. Petro responded by imposing the same tariff and defended his efforts against illegal drug traffickers.

After facing similar accusations from US President Donald Trump over the past year, Petro is scheduled to travel to Washington for meetings with his US counterpart on February 3. (Bssnews)