Two bombs exploded outside residential apartments lining Colombia's National University in Bogota on Friday, killing four people and injuring 21 in the latest of a wave of bombings in big cities.
Interior Minister Armando Estrada said he suspected a government crackdown on far-right paramilitaries could have provoked the attack. But President Andres Pastrana, who called off a trip to France, told a news conference that it was too early to say who was behind it.
"We are going to pursue these people. We are going to hit them with the full force of the law and make them pay for these crimes, these cowardly attacks against the Colombian people," said Pastrana, announcing rewards for information about bombs.
The explosions at a bus stop on a street alongside a quiet section of the university campus were the first to cause fatalities in the Andean mountain capital since 1999.
This year has brought a rash of car bombings in Colombia's big cities unseen since the late drug lord Pablo Escobar's terror campaign in the early 1990s. Authorities believe many of the attacks are unrelated and gangs of common criminals are believed to be behind at least two.
In the first blast on Friday, a package left on a grassy verge alongside low-rise residential apartments across the street from the university -- where Marxist groups are active -- exploded at about 8 a.m. (1300 GMT), killing three.
A second bomb detonated 10 to 15 minutes later, killing a public prosecution official who had rushed to the scene, and wounding policemen and a local television journalist.
Riot police cordoned off the middle-class residential street as smashed bodies were lifted into ambulances. One woman clutched her head as blood dripped down her face. A man cradled his burned arm as rescue workers bandaged his wounds -- BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters)
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