They were searching for a supposed cache of mortar shells that leftist guerrillas purportedly planned to use in an assassination attempt against President Alvaro Uribe, whose airplane was to arrive at the airport this morning. The plane would have passed less than 400 yards above the neighborhood. Around 5:30 a.m., shortly after the authorities entered the last of six homes searched, a powerful bomb exploded, destroying the building, damaging 15 nearby residences and shaking the neighborhood. Television video showed bloody people staggering from flattened homes. A prosecutor accompanying the raid and nine police agents, including the regional secret-police chief, were killed. Three of the dead were children.***
We have reliable reports that crew members are being held by the terrorist group the FARC," State Department spokesman Charles Barclay said Friday in Washington. "If these reports are accurate, we demand the crew members be released unharmed immediately." The bodies of an American and a Colombian were found in the wreckage of the plane. Gen. Jorge Mora, chief of the Colombian armed forces, told reporters both were "executed, in an act of extreme cruelty." Both died from the gunshot wounds, said Alonso Velasquez, director of the attorney general's office in Florencia. ***