Bogota, Colombia – Colombian army sappers on Thursday disarmed two bombs planted on a heavily traveled bridge in this capital, while six other explosive devices were discovered and defused in separate incidents elsewhere, officials said.
Military spokesmen said that several anonymous telephone calls alerted authorities to the presence of the bombs on a bridge over the Tunjuelito River in south Bogota.
After cordoning off a vast area around the span, sappers deactivated the devices, which consisted of cooking-gas cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel.
The army, which noted that dozens of city buses pass over the targeted bridge every day, did not attribute the attempted attack to any group, but the bombs defused by the sappers were of a type often used by the country’s largest insurgency, the FARC.
Conversely, the military did blame the FARC for four cylinder-bombs that soldiers found and defused in a rural area near the town of Saravena in Arauca province, along the Venezuelan border.
In another incident, the army said it foiled an attempt by the smaller ELN rebel group to detonate two bombs as a patrol was passing a spot near Surata in the north-central province of Santander.
On Monday, troops detected and neutralized a truck packed with explosives that was en route to the capital.
Gen. Gustavo Matamoros said the truck had been rigged by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and that the rebels planned to detonate the explosives on Aug. 7, when President Alvaro Uribe will be inaugurated for a second four-year term.
Security forces are on maximum alert to prevent any disturbances in the capital during the run-up to the inauguration, Matamoros said.
The FARC, which denounces Uribe as a war-monger, has made several attempts on his life, including a dramatic rocket attack in Bogota when he was first sworn-in as president in August 2002. The leftist insurgency has been battling a succession of Colombian governments since the mid-1960s.
