Colombians Mourn Attack Victims

Mourners in ragged clothing wept and placed flowers Friday over the caskets of 14 Colombians who were killed when a rebel mortar shell struck Bogota’s skid row just before this week’s presidential inauguration.

Hundreds of people milled around the caskets, which were placed on the sidewalk of this impoverished neighborhood. Seven of the coffins contained bodies that had not been identified.

One woman looked among them for the body of her son, who was apparently decapitated in the blast. Peering through the glass of the casket bearing her son’s name, Maria Acevedo said to no one in particular, “That’s not him.” She hoped to identify him by a scar on his left leg.

Nineteen people died Wednesday when rebels launched mortar shells moments before President Alvaro Uribe was sworn in.