On April 29, 2025, four IEDs were neutralized along a busy road that connects Sandoná municipality with Pasto, in Nariño department, in western Colombia, bordering Ecuador. The daisy-chained IEDs, attributed to FARC dissidents, were cased in gas canisters connected to a command wire initiation system, which ultimately led to an improvised blasting machine fashioned from a modified camera flash.
The modification of camera flashes as improvised blasting machines for initiating IEDs is a known phenomenon, both in Colombia and neighboring regions, as well as in other conflict zones around the world. A small number of instructional manuals describing how to convert camera flashes into improvised blasting machines have been circulated over the years. While the internal power source of a camera flash is relatively low, the electrical output generated by the flash mechanism is high – making it an optimal component for use as an improvised blasting machine to initiate command-detonated IEDs.
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