Two powerful car bombs exploded in rural Colombia yesterday, with the biggest blast - blamed on leftist rebels - wounding 16 people but causing no fatalities, police said.
The attacks are the most recent in a renewed car-bombing campaign rippling across this war-torn Andean nation. The blasts, some in major cities, including the capital Bogota, have killed 12 people and wounded more than 250 so far this year.
At dawn yesterday, a car packed with at least 110 pounds (50 kg) of explosives exploded in the town of San Martin, a prosperous farming and ranching community about 65 miles (100 km) southeast of Bogota.
While only one police officer and 15 civilians were wounded by the shards of glass and rubble sprayed by the blast, the bomb laid waste to two high schools, a police station and other buildings.
Television images showed twisted metal, school desks covered in plaster from broken walls and a collapsed school roof. Nearby homes were reduced to rubble.
"Why do they have to attack public institutions", one schoolgirl, trembling, told local television.
Police blamed the blast on the country's largest rebel force, the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, FARC.
The guerrillas have long controlled San Martin, but over the past five years their authority has been eroded by encroaching far-right paramilitary militias who are funded by landlords and the cocaine trade. The militias target rebels and suspected rebel sympathizers.
The other bomb exploded early yesterday in the municipality of Barrancas, along Colombia's northern border with Venezuela, knocking roofs off homes but causing no injuries.
Police said they were unsure who planted the bomb. They said the area recently had fallen victim to a territorial dispute between Marxist rebels and paramilitary fighters.
