The blast destroyed part of the local office of the attorney general in Buenaventura, the country’s largest port that handles half of the country’s coffee exports but is also a major drug trafficking route to the Pacific coast.
Local television images from the city showed wrecked taxis and destroyed store fronts minutes after the blast as residents carried wounded people to hospitals.
“Unfortunately there are six dead,” said Juan Carlos Abadia, governor of Valle del Cauca State where the city is located. “This is an attempt to destabilize and to generate an atmosphere of fear and chaos.”
Armed Forces commander General Freddy Padilla said guerrillas from the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, were suspected in the bombing. But the country’s attorney general said the blast could have been carried out by drug traffickers in retaliation for his office’s investigations.
Violence, bombings and kidnapping from Colombia’s long war has ebbed since President Alvaro Uribe first came to power in 2002 and sent troops to drive back leftist rebels, paramilitaries and cocaine traffickers.
But rebels are still a force in rural areas where they use ambushes, hit-and-run attacks and homemade landmines to harry army and police patrols. The FARC is deeply engaged in drug trafficking and extortion.
