President Andres Pastrana pleaded for "gestures of peace" from leftist rebels after an oil pipeline blast demolished a rural hamlet, killing 45 villagers and injuring 60 others.
Officials Monday were still investigating Sunday's explosion and subsequent fires in Machuca, a village 180 miles north of Bogota, but they said evidence pointed to Colombia's second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN.There was no immediate comment from the ELN, which has typically launched pipeline attacks in unpopulated areas. The group has carried out 62 dynamite attacks on pipelines this year, protesting what it calls government subservience to foreign oil companies.
"Evidently it was a terrorist attack," Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda said in a television interview, citing army inspections of the pipeline wreckage and of a nearby bridge that he said was also blown up Sunday.