A bomb exploded outside a police building in the Colombian city of Cali
on Sunday, wounding some seventeen people in a rare urban attack,
officials said.
Authorities did not immediately blame any group for the attack, but the
blast came just hours after FARC guerrillas released four hostages in
what they said was a humanitarian gesture in their four-decade conflict
against the state.
“Unfortunately terrorism has gripped our
city again. An explosive device was set off and we have reports of four
wounded,” Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina told reporters at the site,
where the blast ripped the front of the building.
Violence and
attacks in cities have ebbed since President Alvaro Uribe began his
U.S.-backed security crackdown on drug traffickers and leftist rebels
engaged in Latin America’s oldest running guerrilla insurgency.
The government blamed a bomb that killed two people in Bogota last week on a rebel extortion racket.
The FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — is at its
weakest in decades after suffering the deaths of three top commanders,
the rescue of a group of high-profile hostages and a string of
desertions last year.
Rebels released three captive police
officers and one soldier from jungle camps earlier on Sunday in what
analysts said was an attempt to regain political leverage. But talks
with the government appear distant as both sides stick to demands for
any accord. (with Reuters)