Colombia military leader uninjured in bomb blast

Reuters News Service

BOGOTA, Colombia The head of Colombia's armed forces narrowly escaped
death Thursday when a rebel bomb tore apart his armorplated staff car in
the Caribbean port of Santa Marta.

Gen. Manuel Jose Bonett, 58, who took over as military chief two months
ago, was traveling with other senior military officers in a fivevehicle
convoy when the blast occurred just after 10 a.m. local time.

A cousin of the city's mayor died in the explosion, one of the most
spectacular rebel assaults in more than a year, and President Ernesto
Samper vowed the government would fight fire with fire.

"Of course my life was in danger because my car was completely destroyed,"
a shaken Bonett told reporters shortly after the failed assassination bid.

"It was a large explosion ... the doors were blown off and there was smoke
pouring out ... it was like in a movie," said Bonett, explaining that his
charred and dented BMW drove more than a mile without any tires to military
headquarters.

The military chief said the blast, apparently caused by highpowered
explosives packed into three car tires alongside the road, was accompanied
by a hail of gunfire.

Bonett said he had been targeted as the "symbol of the fight" against
"narcoterrorists," referring to Colombia's leftist guerrillas.

Samper, who clashed with Bonett's predecessor over government plans to
launch new peace talks aimed at ending Colombia's threedecadeold
guerrilla war, sent a message of solidarity to Bonett.

"Colombia will respond firmly to these type of attacks. We will not be
intimidated or blackmailed," Samper said. "There will be no letup or truce
until we see those sectors that fight against our institutions submitted to
the rule of law and the wishes of most Colombians."

The attack came shortly after Bonett ordered one of the biggest military
offensives since 1990 in a southeast swamp and jungle region aimed at
rooting out Marxist rebel leaders. It also came at the height of a
twomonth rebel campaign of killings and kidnappings aimed at disrupting
local government elections set for Oct. 26, which has sown nationwide chaos.

Sources at the army's First Division based in Santa Marta said the three
bombs were detonated manually from a point close to the city's coastal
highway.

No arrests were reported, but security forces began combing the city and
surrounding countryside, including the flanks of the towering Sierra Nevada
mountain a long standing rebel stronghold.

Bonett, who is originally from the region around Santa Marta, had been
scheduled to attend a conference of notary publics. He was to discuss
mounting preelection violence.