''It was a huge explosion. I thought an airplane had crashed outside'' said Luis Moreno, who lives across the street from the club on Seventh Avenue and whose apartment building's windows were shattered.
''We were having dinner when the bomb went off,'' said a man, his face blackened from smoke, as his wife was carried away on a stretcher by paramedics. Scores of people stumbled from the wrecked building, many with their faces streaked with blood.
Jorge Velandia, who works at the club's miniature golf course, said the blast opened up a hole in one of the floors and people tumbled through.
Searchers picked through the wreckage today, looking for victims. Rescuers pulled a 12-year-old girl out of the rubble. Several other children are among the injured. Witnesses had said children were to put on a ballet show at the club.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had said several months ago it intended to attack Colombia's elite.***
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Feb 8, 2003 - Colombian ex-rebel says he saw Irish trio setting off explosives***BOGOTA - In dramatic testimony, a former Colombian guerrilla, Edwin Giovanni Rodríguez, testified Friday in a packed courtroom that he witnessed three suspected members of the Irish Republican Army testing weapons in Colombia's former demilitarized zone.
James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley were arrested in August 2001 at Bogotá's El Dorado airport on charges of using false passports. The three men were later found to have IRA links and are on trial for allegedly helping train the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest insurgent group.
Surrounded by heavy security, Rodríguez, 25, testified wearing a bulletproof vest after being transported from prison in Villavicencio, where he is serving a four-year sentence.
Rodríguez, the ex-chauffeur for FARC commander Jorge Briceño described three men whose names he could not confirm who he claimed to have seen in the former demilitarized zone starting on Feb. 5, 2001.
He could not confirm their nationality but said they were known as ''gringos,'' a term used to refer to anyone who didn't speak native Spanish. On Feb. 5, Rodríguez said he was instructed to pick up a person he later recognized as Monaghan in a village in Caquetá and take him to a place called La Y, about three miles away from the demilitarized zone, then controlled by the FARC.
Though he never knew their names, Rodríguez said he recognized the three after they appeared on a television broadcast while he was in prison.
''I know them because when they were captured Jorge Briceño addressed 120 units and said they have already given us what we wanted and from now on they're on their own,'' Rodríguez testified.
Rodríguez said he saw Monaghan frequently because he ferried him to a classroom, where he, along with the two other foreigners, instructed 120 guerrillas in explosives. Though Rodríguez was never inside the classroom, he stood guard outside and apparently overheard what was said inside. After the lessons were complete, Rodríguez testified that he ''was asked to take [Monaghan] to test what had been taught and this was in Los Pozos,'' about two hours from the classroom.***
Iraq, No. Korea, the IRA, Libya, et al, all lend financial support and expertise to world terrorism.
There is no head, per say, and only by crushing them fiercely, whenever they arise, will others take heed and fear.