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Car bomb kills six in Buenaventura

By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A car bomb exploded in the pacific coastal town of Buenaventura on Wednesday morning killing six people and injuring more than forty passers-by.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but local authorities are pointing fingers at the FARC guerrillas who recently hijacked and burnt seven trucks on the Buenaventura to Buga Highway.

Buenaventura is Colombia´s largest port on the Pacific Ocean and is only a three to four hour drive from the industrial city of Cali and the fertile Cauca Valley.

Over the past five years Buenaventura has become a notorious transit point for cocaine shipments leaving from Colombia to Central America as drug traffickers and armed groups use the surrounding mangroves and dozens of small rivers to hide their shipments before they are taken out to sea on fast boats.

The FARC guerrillas are currently fighting for control of areas around Buenaventura with the Colombian army and paramilitary groups leading Valle del Cauca State Governor Juan Carlos Abadia to interpret the attack as a response by the guerrillas to the army´s pressure tactics.

Abadia also told national media that the guerrillas could be doing this in order to instill fear in the local population as the country prepares for the May 30^th Presidential elections.

The State's Attorney General, on the other hand, attributed the attack to drug trafficking gangs who sought to take revenge on local authorities following a recent wave of successful anti-drug trafficking operations in the area.

The car bomb blew up right outside the local branch of the State's Attorney General's office or Fiscalia and destroyed windows around the downtown area and also affected the local mayor´s office.