|
10 killed in bomb blast in Colombia
At least 10 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded early Sunday in a motorcycle bomb attack in Florencia in the southwest of Colombia, police said.
The explosion took place around 4:00 a.m. (1100 GMT) in the Zona Rosa district in downtown Florencia, where there are many bars, restaurants and nightclubs. Florencia is about 380 km southwest of the Colombian capital
Bogota.
The motorcycle bomb was placed outside a crowded disco aiming to cause the heaviest casualties, police said.
"Although the explosive was not powerful, it caused a lot of casualties because it was placed in front of a disco where a lot of people were exciting," said Gen. Luis Alberto Ardila, commander of the Colombian Army's 2nd Division in Florencia, in an
interview with the local radio.
Ardila blamed the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels for the terrorist attack, adding that two policemen, a child and seven bystanders were among the dead.
"We've had two attacks like this in less than a year carried out by the FARC," he added.
The 17,000-strong FARC, the largest rebel group in Colombia, has been battling with the government troops for nearly four decades.
Peru to reinforce state of emergency due to subversive actions
Peru extended from Saturday the state of emergency in five of its 25 states for another 60 days, after there have appeared insurgent outbreaks by the rebellion group Shining Path (SL).
Under a presidential decree issued earlier, President
Alejandro Toledo, who ordered the state of emergency in July and later applied it for 30 more days in August, now decided to suspend the constitutional rights for two more months in several parts of the five states, the official daily El Peruano reported on Saturday.
In these 60 days the armed forces will take control of the internal order, which is up to local authorities under normal conditions, in the territories included in the state of emergency.
In the five states where the state of emergency was declared, SL activities have been reported since June, when the rebels kidnapped 71 workers of an Argentine construction firm. Those states have a total population of 4 million, or 14 percent of the 27.4 million inhabitants of Peru.
The districts of Huanta, La Mar, Andahualayas, Chincheros, Convencion, Tayacaja and Satipo, and the districts of Andamarca and Santo Domingo, all in the five states, will remain in the state of emergency until late November.
The government argued that the conditions that have affected peace and order in the five states since June have proved that
the state of emergency is needed and the third extension is also required.
Venezuela election body approves rules for anti-Chavez referendum
The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela approved on Thursday night the rules for a referendum on the presidency of Hugo Chavez, which push back the holding of the recall vote into early next year, the press reported Friday.
The rules were approved by all the five members on the board
of directors of the electoral institution, Francisco Carrasquero,
the CNE president, was quoted as saying.
Under the rules, it will take the opposition at least five months to complete the petitioning process, during which they
will have to collect at least 2.4 million signatures, or 20 percent of the electorate, accompanied by the fingerprints of those who
sign. As a result, the recall vote can take place at the earliest in February.
The CNE will have 97 days to verify the signatures and set the date for the referendum, Carrasquero said.
Earlier this month, the CNE rejected the 3.2 million
signatures gathered by the opposition as invalid, saying the collection was made before "the period marked by law", namely Aug. 19, the halfway point in Chavez's six-year term.
The opposition has planned to launch a new signature campaign on Oct. 5.
Chavez's opponents have been trying to oust him for more than one year. Chavez has survived a 48-hour coup in April 2002 and a two-month general strike which crippled oil exports of Venezuela, the 5th largest oil exporter in the world.
Opposition leaders on Friday applauded the new rules, saying they pave the way toward holding the recall vote.
|
