Car Bomb Injures 8 in Southern Colombia

By CESAR GARCIA

BOGOTA, Colombia – A car bomb exploded Thursday in a busy district of the southern city of Neiva, injuring eight people in an apparent assassination attempt of the town’s pro-government mayor by leftist rebels.

Mayor Cielo Gonzalez said she was giving a weekly interview to radio station HJKK when police removed a suspicious-looking vehicle parked outside. Minutes later, the car exploded a few blocks away while being towed, burning a bus and other passing vehicles and leaving two motorists lying on the ground.

She told RCN television that the blast occurred shortly before 8 a.m. as she was preparing to leave the station.

Eight people, most of them bus passengers, were injured in the attack, one of them seriously, Gonzalez said.

The attack may have been perpetrated by leftist rebels in retaliation for a tough new government stance, Col. Miguel Angel Bojaca, Huila police commander, told The Associated Press.

On a visit Tuesday to Huila, whose capital is Neiva, President Alvaro Uribe ruled out amnesty for leftist rebels under an eventual peace deal, reversing a long-standing blueprint for ending Colombia’s five-decade civil conflict.

The 15,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America’s oldest and most potent rebel group, had demanded amnesty during three years of failed negotiations with the administration of Uribe’s predecessor.

Neiva has long been engulfed by violence because of its location in the heart of Colombia’s impoverished south – a major stronghold of the FARC. Gonzalez has been the target of at least two other assassination attempts since 2003.

Gonzalez said she would reinforce her security and stay in Neiva, despite an offer from Uribe to relocate her office to Bogota.