World

Deadly Blast Rocks Bogota

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 11, 1999 / 11:06 AM EST / CBS

Raising the specter of a bloody era when drug lords sowed terror to avoid extradition to the United States, a car bomb ripped through a Bogota commercial district Thursday, killing at least eight people and injuring 45.

The shrapnel-packed bomb, placed in a red Mazda sedan and believed detonated by remote control, destroyed a two-story house and a restaurant on a wide avenue and blew out the windows of banks, stores and apartment buildings nearly a quarter mile away.

It was the Colombian capital's worst blast since the wave of terror by the Medellin cocaine cartel in the late 1980s and early 1990s aimed at stopping the extradition of its members to the United States. The campaign only ended with the cartel's 1993 demise.

After this month's delivery of U.S. Blackhawk and Huey helicopters to the Colombian National Police, Bogota announced it would begin extraditing the first of 42 drug traffickers. Then the bombings started. On Tuesday two government officials were injured as well as several by-standers. That same day, Representative Dan Burton, R-In., told CBS News Anchor Dan Rather it's a battle on two fronts: against drug lords and guerillas trying to take over the government.

"I think they (the bombers) are sending a message that they're going to go all out to control that country as much as possible, and I think they can do it," said Burton. "If we don't give the Colombian national police and that government the tools necessary, I believe Colombia will become a narco-guerrilla state."

"You get the feeling the wolf is raising its ears again," said Miguel Maza, a former head of the state security agency. Maza headed the agency in 1989, when a bomb placed by traffickers leveled its headquarters, killing 80 employees in the single most devastating attack of the era.

Colombia is the world's No. 1 cocaine exporter and a growing heroin supplier. U.S. officials have pressured authorities here to extradite drug kingpins for trial in U.S. courtrooms, where they face much stiffer sentences than in Colombia.

This violent country's leaders have traditionally been loath to do so, fearing they would reawaken a sleeping beast -- and there has not been an extradition for nine years. But President Andres Pastrana pledged to resume handovers after his election last year, hoping for U.S. support in confronting the illegal drug trade and leftist rebels.

Emerging from a security council meeting following Thursday's bombing, Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said Pastrana would "keep his word."

Colombian man is aided by rescue workers near of the remains of the car bomb.

Gonzalez said it was still too early to blame "narcoterrorism" for the 10:15 a.m. blst -- which sent shards of metal and glass in all directions. Six people died on the scene, two others at hospitals, and 14 people were hospitalized in serious condition, said city health official Dr. Adriana Ortegon.

A badly burned and bleeding woman was pulled from beneath the skeleton of a parked car thrown by the blast. Another woman was found face up on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. A taxi driver who survived the explosion sat shell-shocked in his badly damaged vehicle, his face bloodied, a few feet from ground zero.

Martha di Iannini had just walked into her luxury furniture store when the bomb went off 50 feet away. It blew open the store's front window and flipped over furniture.

"It was a frightening explosion," she said.

The bomb, made of an estimated 150 pounds of explosives, left a 3-foot deep crater in the sidewalk along the upscale Pepe Sierra Avenue. Sirens wailed and helicopters circled overhead as bomb squad technicians scoured a wide area for clues.

Maza, the former security chief, said the bombing was identical to many of the indiscriminate attacks -- in schools, at shopping centers and in public squares that terrorized Colombia before the 1993 death of Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar ended the violent campaign.

Colombians "will not be intimidated by acts of violence," a shaken Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa said.

If Pastrana ratifies this week's Supreme Court decisions, Venezuelan Jose Fernando Flores and Colombian heroin suspect Jaime Orlando Lara would be the first of 42 jailed alleged drug bosses extradited to stand trial before U.S. courts.

Also facing possible extradition is Fabio Ochoa, a former Medellin cartel leader arrested Oct. 13 along with 29 other Colombians. Ochoa faces a U.S. indictment for his alleged role in a smuggling empire said to have exported as much as 30 tons of cocaine a month.

Colombia halted extraditions in 1991 but moved to allow them in December 1997 because of intense U.S. pressure.

"Innocent people always pay the price for extradition," said Jason Grisales, 25, a waiter at a hamburger restaurant on the same block as Thursday's blast.

Though rarely targeted at the civilian population, bombings have occurred periodically in recent months throughout Colombia, a country mired in a nearly 40-year-old guerrilla conflict. Banks, police stations and army posts are frequently attacked.