A six-floor apartment building in Medellin that Pablo Escobar once called home was demolished Friday in an emotional ceremony that officials hope will dampen some of the fervor for the notorious drug lord's criminal life and instead showcase the city's rebirth.
Rogelio Gomez, the engineer in charge of the demolition, said that 180 detonators were used to topple the Monaco building and a 100 meter (328 feet) security zone was designated around the area.
"1,500 people who live nearby were evacuated for security," he also said.
Clouds of dust rise during the implosion of a six-floor apartment building that former cartel boss Pablo Escobar once called home, in Medellin, Colombia, Friday, Feb. 22, 2019. Mayor Federico Gutierrez had been pushing to raze the building and erect in its place a park honoring the thousands of victims, including four presidential candidates and some 500 police officers, killed by Escobar's army of assassins during the Medellin cartel's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. (AP PhotoLuis Benavidez)
The explosion took place at 11:53 local time and sent a cloud of dust 10 meters (33 feet) into the air.
Colombian President Ivan Duque, who was still a teenager when Escobar was killed in 1993 in a rooftop shootout with police, said the explosion "means that history is not going to be written in terms of the perpetrators but by recognizing the victims."
The white concrete building in Medellin's leafy Poblado neighborhood was gutted by a car bomb in 1988 and has remained an unoccupied eyesore ever since, drawing mostly foreign tourists who sign up every day for tours of Escobar's former hometown haunts. The Netflix "Narcos" series has also popularized such attractions.
This photo shows the six-floor apartment building that former cartel boss Pablo Escobar once called home, before its demolition, in Medellin, Colombia, Friday, Feb. 22, 2019. Mayor Federico Gutierrez had been pushing to raze the building and erect in its place a park honoring the thousands of victims, including four presidential candidates and some 500 police officers, killed by Escobar's army of assassins during the Medellin cartel's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. (AP PhotoLuis Benavidez)
But Mayor Federico Gutierrez had been pushing to raze the building and erect in its place a park honoring the thousands of victims, including four presidential candidates and some 500 police officers, killed by Escobar's army of assassins during the Medellin cartel's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s.
"We are paying back a historical debt with our victims," Gutierrez said prior to the demolition.
Retired Gen. Rosse Jose Serrano, who for many years led the elite police squad that pursued Escobar, said the Monaco building was where the famous capo planned some of his most brazen attacks.
"It was his criminal fortress," Serrano told The Associated Press.
Still, some in Colombia remember him fondly as a Robin Hood-like father figure who gave away homes to the poor and railed against the nation's political elites.
Escobar built the Monaco for his wife, and the fugitive's family was living there when Escobar's rivals from the Cali cartel bombed it in 1988.
After his death, successive Colombian administrations burdened by red tape, legal challenges and perhaps fear of awakening Escobar's ghosts struggled to find a buyer to take over the abandoned property.
Once the murder capital of the world, Medellin, like much of Colombia, has seen major improvements in security over the past 15 years, although the murder rate has been inching up since its all-time low in 2015.
Nonetheless, the city's vibrant cultural scene, spring-like weather and entrepreneurial locals have converted it into one of the gems of the South American nation's tourism boom.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people in the capital. For only the second time in the nearly 4-year-old war, it used a powerful, new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in a clear warning to Kyiv’s NATO allies.
The intense barrage and the launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress toward agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a U.S.-led peace deal is struck.
Europe’s leaders condemned the attack as “escalatory and unacceptable,” and the European Union's top foreign policy envoy said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reply to diplomacy was “more missiles and destruction.”
The attack also coincides with a new chill in relations between Moscow and Washington after Russia condemned the U.S. seizure of an oil tanker in the North Atlantic. It comes as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled he is on board with a hard-hitting sanctions package meant to economically cripple Moscow, which has given no public signal it is willing to budge from its maximalist demands on Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said four people were killed and at least 25 wounded in Kyiv as apartment buildings were struck overnight.
Those killed included an emergency medical aid worker, according to Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. Four doctors and one police officer were injured while responding to the attacks, authorities said.
About half of snowy Kyiv’s apartment buildings — nearly 6,000 — were left without heat amid daytime temperatures of about minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 Fahrenheit), Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Water supplies also were disrupted.
Municipal services restored power and heat to public facilities, including hospitals and maternity wards, using portable boiler units, he said.
The attack damaged the Qatari Embassy in Kyiv, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who noted that Qatar has played a key role in mediating the exchange of prisoners of war.
He called for a “clear response” from the international community, particularly from the U.S., which he said Russia takes seriously.
Ukraine’s Security Service said it identified debris from the Oreshnik missile in the Lviv region in the country's west. It was fired from Russia’s Kapustin Yar test range near the Caspian Sea in southwestern Russia and targeted civilian infrastructure, investigators said.
“I heard a loud, shocking explosion, and it’s normal at this time of the war to hear these things here," said Lviv resident Kristofer Chokhovich, who said he was an American. "I just want everyone in the world to know that Ukraine is strong and we don’t care how many missiles you send.”
Another resident, Ulyana Fedun, described the attack as “very unpleasant” but not scary because “we’ve been living in this state for four years.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack was a retaliation to what Moscow claimed was a Ukrainian drone strike on one of Putin’s residences last month. Both Trump and Ukraine rejected the Russian claim.
Moscow didn’t say where the Oreshnik hit, but Russian media and military bloggers said it targeted an underground natural gas storage facility in the Lviv region. Western military aid flows to Ukraine from a supply hub in Poland just across the border.
Putin has previously said the Oreshnik streaks to its target at Mach 10, “like a meteorite,” and is immune to any missile defense system. Several of them used in a conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack, according to Putin, who has warned the West that Russia could use it against allies of Kyiv that allow it to strike inside Russia with longer-range missiles.
Ukrainian intelligence says the missile has six warheads, each carrying six submunitions.
Russia first used the Oreshnik missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024. Analysts say it gives Russia a new element of psychological warfare, unnerving Ukrainians and intimidating Western countries that aid Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine would be initiating international action in response to the use of the missile, including an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council and a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council.
The Security Council scheduled a Monday afternoon meeting on Ukraine.
“Such a strike close to EU and NATO border is a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community. We demand strong responses to Russia’s reckless actions,” he said in a post on X.
Ukraine’s request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council has been conveyed to the council, and six of the 15 members have called for a meeting on Monday, but no date has been set yet, a U.N. diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions have been private.
Pope Leo XIV, speaking at the Vatican, urged the international community to keep pushing for peace and end the suffering in Ukraine.
“Faced with this tragic situation, the Holy See strongly reiterates the pressing need for an immediate ceasefire, and for dialogue motivated by a sincere search for ways leading to peace,” the pontiff told ambassadors to the Vatican from around the world.
The leaders of Britain, France and Germany said they spoke about the attack and deemed it “escalatory and unacceptable.”
EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the Oreshnik launch was “meant as a warning to Europe and to the U.S.”
“Putin doesn’t want peace, Russia’s reply to diplomacy is more missiles and destruction,” Kallas wrote on social media.
Several districts in Kyiv were hit in the overnight attack, according to Tkachenko, the city's military administration chief. In the Desnyanskyi district, a drone crashed onto the roof of a multistory building and the first two floors of another residential building were damaged.
In the Dnipro district, parts of a drone damaged a multistory building and a fire broke out.
Dmytro Karpenko's windows were shattered in the attack on Kyiv. When he saw that his neighbor's house was burning, he rushed to help him.
“What Russia is doing, of course, shows that they do not want peace. But people really want peace, people are suffering, people are dying," the 45-year old said.
Vasilisa Stepanenko in Kyiv, Ukraine, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
The body of a paramedic lies on the ground in the snow outside a residential building damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A residential building is damaged after a Russian air strike during a heavy snow storm in Kyiv, Ukraine, early Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and British Defense Secretary John Healey talk in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)
This photo provided by the Ukrainian Security Service on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, shows a fragment believed to be a part of a Russian Oreshnik intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile that hit the Lviv region. (Ukrainian Security Service via AP)
This photo provided by the Ukrainian Security Service on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, shows a fragment believed to be a part of a Russian Oreshnik intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile that hit the Lviv region. (Ukrainian Security Service via AP)
A rescue worker tries to put out a fire at a residential building damaged after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A residential building is seen damaged after a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
The dead body of a paramedic lies on the ground in front of a residential building damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A residential building burns after a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A residential building is seen damaged after a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescue workers put out a fire at a residential building damaged by a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescue workers put out a fire at a residential building damaged by a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A residential building burns after a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
