A feud between right-wing paramilitaries and criminal gangs was blamed for a powerful car bomb that exploded in a crowded park in the Colombian city of Medellin yesterday, killing eight people and injuring 137.
"All indications are that this is a retaliation stemming from a war between the AUC and criminal bands, specifically The Terrace band", Gen Tobias Duran, director of operations at the National Police, told reporters.
A car bomb packed with 44 pounds (20 kg) of explosives ripped through an upscale neighborhood in Medellin, north of Bogota, hurling shards of debris and glass onto crowds enjoying a night out at a park bordered by cafes, restaurants and night clubs.
It was the second car bomb to explode in less than 15 days in violence-racked Colombia, torn by a 37-year-old war that has killed 40,000 people in the last decade.
President Andres Pastrana, who has bet his presidency on bringing peace to his South American nation, flew to Medellin and toured the bomb site. After a security meeting with top military officials, he ordered 100 members of an elite police unit to Medellin to investigate the blast and prevent more attacks.
The 8,000-member AUC is locked in a bloody feud with The Terrace, its former ally in an unlikely alliance of drug traffickers, street criminals and anti-communist fighters, after AUC leader Carlos Castano ordered the killing of its leaders in what was believed to be a settling of scores.
The surviving Terrace leaders then threatened to turn over to prosecutors evidence linking high-profile assassinations and kidnappings carried out by the gang on Castano's orders.
The AUC, which the United States last month added to its list of other terrorist organizations, are financed in part by businessmen and cattle ranchers frustrated at the military's failure to defeat the rebels.
Medellin is one of the host cities of the Copa America soccer tournament to be staged in Colombia July 11-29. The blast sparked fears of a repetition of the bloody bombing campaign that shattered this Andean nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of the drug wars.