BOMB BLAST IN UPSCALE BOGOTA NEIGHBORHOOD KILLS AT LEAST SIX

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A powerful car bomb exploded on a busy Bogota avenue
today, killing at least six people and injuring 30 in an attack the mayor
said could be a response to the government's decision to renew extraditions
of alleged drug traffickers to the United States.

The bomb, placed in a red Mazda sedan, destroyed a two-story house and a
restaurant in an upscale neighborhood and blew out the windows of banks,
hotels and three seven-story apartment buildings across the avenue some 150
feet away.

Estimated by police at 150 pounds, the bomb blasted a 3-foot-deep crater in
the sidewalk adjacent Pepe Sierra avenue. The car's wreckage was found 20
feet away.

It was the worst terrorist attack in Bogota since a bloody anti-extradition
campaign of bombings that ended in 1993 with the demise of the Medellin
cocaine cartel.

Mayor Enrique Penalosa said the blast, which appeared to have no specific
target other than the civilian population, could be related to the
government's decision to resume the extradition of alleged drug traffickers
to stand trial in the United States.

"It would seem that it's related to extradition," Penalosa speculated of
the 10:15 a.m. bombing in brief comments to an Associated Press reporter at
the scene.

This week, Colombia's highest court approved the extradition to the United
States of two alleged drug traffickers. They would be the first of 42
alleged traffickers now in Colombian jails wanted for extradition to stand
trial before U.S. courts.

Colombia has not extradited anyone to the United States for nine years. The
country had banned extradition in 1991 and reinstated it in December 1997.

President Andres Pastrana immediately convened the national security
council and said the city would offer a $50,000 reward for information
leading to the culprits.

A former director of the state security agency, Fernando Brito, told the AP
that he believed drug traffickers were responsible for today's blast
"because of the method used, in an open space where anyone passing by could
be killed."

"These methods were used in the past to pressure the government" not to
extradite alleged drug traffickers to the United States, where they face
far stiffer jail terms than in Colombia, Brito said.

On July 30, a car bomb directed at the army's anti-kidnapping squad killed
10 people in the western city of Medellin, all of them police, soldiers and
judicial investigators. Leftist rebels claimed responsibility for that attack.

At the scene of today's blast, AP reporters saw one man being carried into
an ambulance who had his leg torn apart and was bleeding profusely. Police
said five people were killed on the spot and a sixth died after being
rushed to a nearby hospital.

"I saw the light and then everything went blank," said Mario Renton, a
34-year-old watchman at the Rancher's Federation offices across the avenue,
which is divided by a grassy divider.

Renton's nose was broken by the force of the blast and he was bleeding from
his forehead.

Marta 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, turning
all the furniture upside down.

"It was a frightening explosion," she said. The blast turned Di Lannin's
silver Mercedes, parked outside the story, into a twisted hulk.

The adjacent restaurant - Pan de Bono Caleno - was destroyed and firemen
were trying to extinguish flames in a two-story structure completely blown
apart.