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Bomb Lures Police To Their Deaths

The Australian - From Dan Molinski in Bogota, Colombia

SUSPECTED rebels have detonated a roadside bomb in the Colombian capital Bogota, attracting police and onlookers, before setting off a larger bomb, which killed two police officers and wounded eight other people.

The two dead officers - a man and a woman - were in a police car that had just pulled up at the scene when the second bomb, planted in a plastic bag next to a light pole, exploded.

Three other police officers in the car and five civilians were wounded in the attack in a working-class neighbourhood of the capital.

Bogota Police chief General Hector Garcia said Colombia’s main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was apparently behind the bombings.

Police offered 100 million pesos ($57,025) for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

The FARC and a smaller leftist rebel group have been fighting a succession of elected governments in the South American country for four decades. More than 3000 people, many of them civilians, die in the conflict each year.