Bomb blast in Colombia port city kills one

Bogota, Mar 3: A small bomb exploded in the Colombian port of Buenaventura today, killing one woman in an area where left-wing rebels, paramilitaries and criminals battle for control of drug smuggling routes, authorities said.

The explosive, placed in a bag, detonated as the woman was walking by and she died later in a hospital, said the secretary for the mayor's office in Buenaventura, the country's largest port 350 km southwest of Bogota.

''It was a regular-size explosive, and unfortunately a woman who was a victim has died,'' Jaime Oswaldo Marines said.

The blast could be retaliation for a security crackdown on the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in Buenaventura, Marine Col Hector Pachon told local radio.

The explosion, which blew out windows and damaged nearby houses, came a day after rebels set off a car bomb in a bid to kill the mayor of Neiva in southern Colombia.

Ten people were wounded, but the mayor escaped after a bodyguard ordered the suspicious car towed away from a radio station where she was speaking.

Violence from Colombia's four-decade-old conflict has dropped since President Alvaro Uribe began his US-backed campaign to crush the rebels and the drug trade they use for finances. But guerrillas are still fighting in rural areas.

Six people were killed in Buenaventura in January when rebels set off a bomb near a passing police patrol in what authorities said was likely retaliation for counter-narcotics operations.

Reuters