Four Dead, 56 Wounded in Colombian Shopping Blast

reuters.com Wed March 5, 2003 01:41 PM ET

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - A bomb ripped through an underground parking lot at a shopping mall near Colombia's northeastern border with Venezuela on Wednesday, killing at least four people and injuring 56 others in an attack police blamed on leftist rebels.

The explosion ignited parked cars, adding more power to the blast and causing an avalanche of concrete as panicked shoppers attempted to flee the spreading fire. It the first major bomb attack since December in Cucuta, a city long-gripped by Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war.

"We heard a very strong explosion and then flames burst out. Then there was a fire and some parts of building caved in," said one man, who escaped the blast unharmed.

Police said the bombers were leftist rebels with the National Liberation Army, a Cuban-inspired guerrilla group known by its Spanish initials ELN. They offered no evidence, and the ELN did not claim responsibility for the blast.

"The information we have is that it was a small bomb placed on top of a vehicle's gasoline tank, which spread the fire to other cars," said police Col. Oscar Gambo.

Cucuta Mayor Manuel Guillermo Mora said four bodies had been found, and fear more dead would be unearthed under the rubble. He counted 56 injured, without offering details on the victims. The country's conflict has claimed about 40,000 lives in the past decade.

The attack came the same day that U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman met President Alvaro Uribe, some 250 miles away in the nation's capital, Bogota. The meeting and bomb were unrelated, police said.

The United States brands Colombia's rebels "terrorists," and is providing anti-narcotics and counter-insurgency training for Colombian troops.