KEY POINTS:
BOGOTA - Seven bomb and grenade attacks blamed by authorities on leftist rebels wounded 23 people in Colombia's main port Buenaventura yesterday and today, part of an intensifying drug war in the city.
The attacks were directed at a police station and commercial areas frequented by civilians. Seven of the victims were children.
Another bomb was deactivated by police in the Pacific port city, which moves about half of Colombia's international shipments.
Police said the attacks began yesterday in The Oasis restaurant, which was destroyed by the blast. The last explosion happened at daybreak on Saturday.
"The victims of this miserable, criminal, terrorist act were the poor people of Buenaventura," the provincial governor, Angelino Garzon, told reporters. "But we will not let this paralyse us."
Port operations remained open today.
Colombia, the world's biggest producer of cocaine, has received billions of dollars in US aid to crack down on the drug trade. Democrats in control of the US Congress are toughening conditions on that aid, saying the investment has not resulted in a slowdown of cocaine exports.
The Andean country is in a four-decade-old guerrilla war involving Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries. Both groups have grown rich on the drug trade while thousands of noncombatants are killed in the crossfire every year.
"Right now Buenaventura is Colombia's most strategically important hub for the export of drugs and the import of arms," said Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota-based think tank Seguridad & Democracia.
"The city is in turmoil due to a clash between guerrillas and paramilitaries fighting to control loads of cocaine leaving the country for Asia, which is becoming a large consumer, and the United States," Casas said.
Colombia has focused its anti-cocaine efforts on destroying coca crops used to make the drug. But farmers have dispersed their coca plantations into smaller and better hidden areas, allowing production to remain as strong as ever.
The government estimates that 600 to 700 tonnes of cocaine are exported from Colombia every year.
- REUTERS
