Authorities: Bomb kills 5, wounds 40 in Colombia
ASSOCIATED PRESS February 1, 2012 3:20PM
Motorcycles burn after a bomb exploded outside a police station in Tumaco on Colombia's southern Pacific coast, Wednesday Feb. 1, 2012. Police Gen. Rodolfo Palomino said that at least five people were killed and 20 wounded and blamed the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the attack. (AP Photo/Victor Manuel Correa, Diario del Sur)
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Updated: February 1, 2012 6:29PM
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A bomb exploded outside a police station in the Pacific port city of Tumaco just as lunch hour ended Wednesday, killing at least five people and wounding more than 40, authorities said.
The bomb appeared to be a motorcycle packed with explosives, Tumaco security chief Hernando Cortes told The Associated Press.
Gen. Rodolfo Palomino, the national police director of citizen security, initially reported five deaths and 20 injuries. Doris Balderizo, head of the Tumaco hospital emergency department, later said that more than 40 people had been wounded, a dozen of them with serious injuries.
Palomino blamed the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the attack, though Tumaco’s mayor, Victor Gallo, refrained from assigning blame.
The southwestern port is one of Colombia’s most lawless cities, a cocaine-smuggling hub where leftist rebels, right-wing criminal bands and drug traffickers are all present.
The 1:58 p.m. blast occurred “in an area with a great abundance of population, as much for the hour as the geographical location,” Palomino said. It is the end of lunch hour in Colombia.
Tumaco is located in Narino state, which borders Ecuador and is laced with scores of rivers popular with drug traffickers, who include the FARC.
The most recent major FARC attack in the region occurred in October when 10 soldiers were killed in a mortar attack while on patrol in a rural part of Tumaco.
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