Two separate attacks blamed on dissident guerilla groups killed 18 people and wounded dozens in Colombia on Thursday, one involving a truck bomb while a drone downed a police helicopter in the other, deepening the country’s most serious security crisis in decades.

The latest deadly attacks, which struck the southwestern city of Cali and a coca farm in the north, pose fresh challenges to Colombia’s fragile peace processes ahead of elections next year.

Around 3 pm local time (2000 GMT), a truck loaded with explosives was detonated on a busy street near a military aviation school in Cali, killing six people and wounding more than 60, officials said.

“There was a thunderous sound of something exploding near the air base,” 65-year-old eyewitness Hector Fabio Bolanos told AFP.

“There were so

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