Will Press Drug Battle, Colombia Vows : Latin America: Barco vows to fight the ‘tyranny of the narco-terrorists.’ Death toll in latest bombing reaches 61.

The Colombian government sought to rally national and international support Thursday for its battle against drug lords accused of planning a terrorist bomb attack that killed as many as 61 people.

“With faith, bravery and firmness let us stand up to defend the fatherland,” President Virgilio Barco Vargas said in a message from Japan, where he was finishing an official visit. “We are not going to let ourselves fall under the bloody tyranny of the narco-terrorists.”

Justice Minister Roberto Salazar said the Colombian government needs more foreign aid to help pay the heavy cost of fighting powerful international drug traffickers based in this country.

“Colombia cannot let itself be defeated by minorities that, with their economic strength, are trying to corrupt the country,” Salazar said in an interview.

Barco, Salazar and other officials blamed traffickers for the explosion of a powerful bus-bomb Wednesday that devastated the country’s police intelligence headquarters and several other buildings in southwestern Bogota.

Raul Ariza, an employee of the Red Cross, said the agency had compiled a list of 61 people killed by the bomb and 418 injured. Dr. Egon Lichtenberger, director of the official Institute of Legal Medicine, said that the morgue had received 43 bodies by late Thursday afternoon but that more were expected from hospitals.

According to a report published Thursday in the newspaper El Tiempo, a tow truck pulling a bus stopped across the street from the police intelligence headquarters at about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“When the tow truck was just in front of the building, its occupants unhooked the bus and sped away,” El Tiempo said. “Seconds later, the powerful charge exploded.”

Police said the bus contained at least a half-ton of dynamite.

It was the latest of more than 200 terrorist bombings attributed to cocaine traffickers since late August. According to unofficial tallies, bombs have killed about 70 people in addition to Wednesday’s victims and the 111 who died in a domestic airline crash caused by a bomb Nov. 27.

“Another Narco-Massacre,” said a Bogota newspaper’s front-page headline Thursday.

Justice Minister Salazar said Colombians have been badly frightened by the campaign.

“The monstrosity it has come to is incredible,” he said.

In an effort to bolster public resolve against the drug lords, Cabinet ministers issued a statement emphasizing that the fight is not only between the government and drug trafficking.

“It is a war of the drug traffic against all Colombians,” said the statement, published Thursday. “If we want to preserve democracy in the future, the struggle against narco-terrorism must be a national effort.”

President Barco also said in his message from Japan that Colombian democracy is in danger.

“Men, women and children who were in the fullness of their lives have been sacrificed by the demented acts of a few criminals who intend to put a people and a government, a whole country, under their control with threats of terror and destruction,” Barco said.

Although the target of the bus-bomb Wednesday was the headquarters of the Administrative Department of Security, most of those killed were on the street and in nearby buildings unrelated to the police intelligence center. Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, commander of the department, was in the building but was not injured.

“May it be God’s will that those deaths serve a purpose for us Colombians,” Maza said Thursday in a television interview. “Or at least for us to reflect, for us to realize that the dirty money of the narcotics traffic is not the thing needed to stay alive.”

Police released three Colombian suspects detained after the bombing, and two others awaited questioning.

None of the five were identified.

In August, President Barco issued a decree that allows accused drug traffickers to be extradited to the United States for trial. The traffickers’ terrorist campaign is, in part, a response to that decree.

This week, controversy over the decree plunged Barco’s Liberal Party into a crisis. Some Liberal members of the House of Representatives, defying government policy, helped pass a bill that would submit the decree to voter approval in a January plebiscite already scheduled on a package of proposed constitutional amendments.

Traffickers calling themselves “the Extraditables” issued a communique Wednesday expressing “joy” over the lower house’s vote.

“We will end our war only on the day that the Senate definitively confirms that the people will be our judge,” the communique said.

A bazooka shot that killed two policemen Thursday in the city of Cartagena was initially reported as a new attack by the drug lords. But police later said it was carried out by the National Liberation Army, a Marxist guerrilla organization.