DRUG LORDS SUSPECTED IN COLOMBIA BOMBING

At Least Eight Killed In Bogota Explosion

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Raising the specter of a bloody era when drug
lords sowed terror to avoid extradition to the United States, a car
bomb ripped through a Bogota commercial district yesterday, killing at
least eight people and injuring 45.

The shrapnel-packed bomb, placed in a red Mazda sedan and believed
detonated by remote control, destroyed a two-story house and a
restaurant on a wide avenue and blew out the windows of banks, stores
and apartment buildings nearly a quarter mile away.

It was the Colombian capital's worst blast since the wave of terror by
the Medellin cocaine cartel in the late 1980s and early 1990s aimed at
stopping the extradition of its members to the United States. The
campaign only ended with the cartel's 1993 demise.

The new attack came a day after the Supreme Court approved the second
handover in a week of a major alleged drug trafficker to the United
States -- and Colombians feared it was a blunt warning to the
government not to go ahead with more than three dozen planned
extraditions.

"You get the feeling the wolf is raising its ears again," said Miguel
Maza, a former head of the state security agency. Maza headed the
agency in 1989, when a bomb placed by traffickers leveled its
headquarters, killing 80 employees in the single most devastating
attack of the era.

Colombia is the world's No. 1 cocaine exporter and a growing heroin
supplier. U.S. officials have pressured authorities here to extradite
drug kingpins for trial in U.S. courtrooms, where they face much
stiffer sentences than in Colombia.

This violent country's leaders have traditionally been loath to do so
and there has not been an extradition for nine years. But President
Andres Pastrana pledged to resume handovers after his election last
year, hoping for U.S. support in confronting the illegal drug trade
and leftist rebels.

Pastrana responded to yesterday's bombing defiantly, signing a decree
hours later that would extradite to the United States an accused
Colombian drug lord.

Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said it was still too early to blame
"narcoterrorism" for the 10:15 a.m. blast -- which sent shards of
metal and glass in all directions. Six people died on the scene, two
others at hospitals, and 14 people were hospitalized in serious
condition, said city health official Dr. Adriana Ortegon.

A badly burned and bleeding woman was pulled from beneath the skeleton
of a parked car thrown by the blast. Another woman was found face up
on the sidewalk in a pool of blood.

Martha di Iannini had just walked into her luxury furniture store when
the bomb went off 50 feet away. It blew open the store's front window
and flipped over furniture.

"It was a frightening explosion," she said.

The bomb, made of an estimated 150 pounds of explosives, left a
3-foot-deep crater in the sidewalk along the upscale Pepe Sierra
Avenue. Sirens wailed and helicopters circled overhead as bomb squad
technicians scoured a wide area for clues.

Maza, the former security chief, said the bombing was identical to
many of the indiscriminate attacks -- in schools, at shopping centers
and in public squares -- that terrorized Colombia before the 1993
death of Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar ended the violent campaign.

Colombians "will not be intimidated by acts of violence," a shaken
Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa said.

Venezuelan Jose Fernando Flores and Colombian heroin suspect Jaime
Orlando Lara are scheduled to be the first of 42 jailed alleged drug
bosses extradited to stand trial before U.S. courts.

Also facing possible extradition is Fabio Ochoa, a former Medellin
cartel leader arrested Oct. 13 along with 29 other Colombians. Ochoa
faces a U.S. indictment for his alleged role in a smuggling empire
said to have exported as much as 30 tons of cocaine a month.

Colombia halted extraditions in 1991 but moved to allow them in
December 1997 because of intense U.S. pressure.

"Innocent people always pay the price for extradition," said Jason
Grisales, 25, a waiter at a hamburger restaurant on the same block as
yesterday's blast.

Though rarely targeted at the civilian population, bombings have
occurred periodically in recent months throughout Colombia, a country
mired in a nearly 40-year-old guerrilla conflict. Banks, police
stations and army posts are frequently attacked.