5 Colombian Police Killed in Medellin Bus Bombing

BOGOTA, Colombia — A bomb exploded on a street in Medellin as a bus carrying policemen passed by, killing five officers and wounding 16, police said today.

Three more bombs exploded Thursday night and early today in the capital of Bogota, wounding one person, and another bomb in Bogota was deactivated Thursday night at a bank, police said.

Also Thursday, two policemen assigned as guards to the Ecuadorean Consulate in Medellin were shot and killed as they tried to help another policeman make an arrest, police in the city said. They blamed street thugs and said the killers escaped.

No one claimed responsibility for the bus attack late Thursday, but police blamed drug barons angered by the government’s refusal to negotiate its policy of extraditing traffickers to the United States.

“The traffickers are the only criminals with the means and the desire to carry out an attack of this size,” said a police spokesman in Medellin, the center of Colombia’s drug trade.

In the two months since the government declared a war on traffickers and the drug lords responded with violent attacks, 169 bombings attributed to the traffickers have killed 21 people and injured 219.

The bomb in Medellin, packing over 60 pounds of dynamite, was placed on a curb and detonated as the bus passed. National RCN radio said 44 officers were on the bus at the time.

The driver and four others died in the explosion, which severely damaged the bus and sent it reeling out of control, the police spokesman said. Many of the 16 injured were in critical condition, he said.

The bus finally stopped when it smashed into a parked taxi, the spokesman said. The right side of the bus was riddled with shrapnel from the bomb, a Medellin police spokeswoman said.

The bomb was connected with electrical cable to a plunger two blocks away, the spokeswoman said. The vehicle was carrying police officers to their posts for night duty.