Lopez, the candidate of the Green Alliance party, beat one leftist and two conservative candidates, state-owned broadcaster Canal Uno reported. She will succeed Enrique Penalosa, a liberal.

President Ivan Duque's conservative Democratic Centre party failed to conquer the city hall of the second-largest city, Medellin, which elected independent candidate Daniel Quintero as its mayor.

The third-largest city, Cali, chose centrist Jorge Ivan Ospina.

The elections were the first local ones since then-president Juan Manuel Santos signed a peace deal with the leftist guerrilla movement FARC in 2016 after 52 years of armed conflict.

More than 100,000 people ran for departmental governors, mayors, provincial legislators and local councillors.

The peace deal failed to stop the typical local election violence in the country where FARC dissidents, other guerrillas, paramilitary and criminal groups continue to vie for influence.

Seven candidates were killed, and dozens attacked or threatened.

The government appeared unable to stop the violence, a situation that Duque's critics attributed to his alleged unwillingness to fully implement the peace agreement, which he has criticised as being too lenient on the ex-rebels.

The elections were also fraught with allegations that many candidates were implicated in corrupt deals, had ties with paramilitary groups or that they might engage in vote-buying.

Many of the candidates represented heterogeneous coalitions of different parties, a fact that was seen as reflecting a growing distrust of traditional political ideologies.

"Parties have no weight in these elections, because the voter does not vote for the party, but votes for the candidate and the public image that the candidate has created," Carlos Arias, a professor specialised in electoral questions, told daily El Tiempo.

Australian Associated Press