Posted on 02/15/2003 12:34:21 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA - A powerful blast leveled a home being raided by police Friday, killing 16 people and injuring more than 40 others in the latest of a string of urban bombings that have changed the dynamics of this country's 40-year-old guerrilla war.
Acting on a tip, Colombian police and prosecutors raided a series of homes early Friday morning in a neighborhood near the airport in Neiva, a city about 150 miles southwest of Bogotá, the capital.
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.
''My God! My God,'' exclaimed Irma Diaz, whose house disappeared in the blast. ``Every day, something worse happens.''
Scattered around her were items that she and her neighbors had scrimped and saved for, now turned to debris: children's shoes, pieces of tables, carpets, pots and pans.
GIRL SURVIVES
Diaz, 50, said she rushed home from her cleaning job after hearing the explosion to check on her daughter. The girl was alive but suffered a fractured hip.
At least half of the wounded were children, injured by debris as they slept. Gen. Teodoro Campo, head of the national police, blamed the bombing on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC for the guerrilla group's Spanish initials.
''The home was located in the trajectory of the landing strip,'' said Campo, who arrived on the scene shortly after the bombing. ``All this leads us to think that it was a plan directed at an airplane.''
Colombia's conflict pits the government and an illegal right-wing paramilitary force against leftist rebels. The United States has become increasingly involved in the conflict, sending Special Forces to train Colombian troops and stepping up intelligence-sharing.
Traditionally, the war has been fought in the countryside, where FARC rebels would attacks police stations and military outposts. But Friday's bombing was the most recent affirmation that the battle has moved to the cities.
Colombia is still struggling to recover from an attack a week ago that left at least 35 dead and more than 160 wounded when a car bomb exploded in the parking garage of the country's most exclusive private club.
U.S. HELP
Agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were called in to help investigate the blast, which was blamed on the FARC.
The technology to build such devices was allegedly learned from the Irish Republican Army and Spain's Basque separatist group ETA.
The FARC began using homemade mortar shells in August, when they launched an attack against Uribe on the day of his inauguration.
The mortars went awry and killed more than a dozen people in a poor neighborhood near the presidential palace in the capital.
Some doubted that Friday's bombing was an assassination attempt, instead believing that the tip about the mortar shells was designed to lure the police officers to their deaths.
No one was in the house when it was raided, and the explosion was produced by a 220-pound dynamite charge, not mortar shells.
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.***
January 16, 2003 - U.S. Special Forces Arrive in Colombia
Feb 8, 2003 Colombia blames bombing that killed 31 on rebels (FARC) *** BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia's government blamed leftist rebels today for a car bomb that ripped through an exclusive social club, killing 31 people -- including six children -- and injuring 157 in the worst terrorist attack in Bogota in more than a decade.
The bomb, which gutted the 11-story club Friday evening, was planted on the third floor inside a parking garage and was packed with 330 pounds of explosives, officials said.
The attack was a shock to capital residents accustomed to a war, now in its fourth decade, fought mostly in the countryside. Vice President Francisco Santos said he "had no doubt" the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was responsible. ***
Anti-Chavez student tortured by police, says head of Venezuela's central university *** CARACAS, Venezuela - Secret police tortured a university student who participated in a youth protest against President Hugo Chavez, the rector of the Central University of Venezuela alleged Thursday. A high-ranking official of the Interior Ministry, which oversees the federal secret police, denied the claim. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity.
University Rector Giuseppe Gianetto told Union Radio that 18-year-old Ricardo Sanchez, an international studies major, was kidnapped by agents as he left an opposition youth protest in Caracas on Wednesday. Sanchez was blindfolded, beaten and burned with an object before agents released him early Thursday in a Caracas slum, Gianetto said. Sanchez was under the protective custody of university attorneys who were filing a complaint with the attorney general's office. "This kind of vile and cowardly torture hasn't been seen in this country for a long time," said Gianetto. "Not even youths can use their constitutional rights to go out and protest peacefully." ***
Terrorists active in U.S. 'backyard': Latin America hotbed for both al-Qaida, Hezbollah*** As the administration of President George W. Bush weighs an attack against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, international terrorist groups are taking firm hold in South America – often referred to as "America's backyard" – according to recent testimony given to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Both Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and the Palestinian terrorist group Hezbollah are active in Latin America, with Hezbollah having "broader penetration in the Western Hemisphere than any other terrorist organization," stated the U.S. State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, Mark F. Wong, in testimony before the U.S. House International Relations Committee.
Hezbollah "is a multi-faceted, multinational" organization that "has a presence in virtually every country in North and South America. …" Wong reported. ***
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. ***
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. ***
Axis of Evil.
Teddy Kennedy and his family are waist deep with the IRA.
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