BOGOTA (AFP) — A car bomb exploded early Monday in Colombia's third largest city Cali, killing four people and wounding at least 12 in one of the deadliest urban attacks this year, authorities said.
The explosion occurred five minutes after midnight (0505 GMT) near the Palace of Justice, where offices of Cali's judges and other civil servants are located, said Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina.
"The bomb exploded in the area behind the Palace of Justice, right in the centre of the city, causing the death of four people," Ospina said.
"One of the victims was travelling in a vehicle, two others were in the road and the other appeared to be a street vendor," he said, adding that their bodies were badly burned and mutilated.
The mayor said authorities had no information on who set off the bomb, which he said contained about 80 kilograms (175 pounds) of explosives and left a crater two meters (yards) across, causing damage to nearby buildings including the court building.
Cali is in the west, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) southwest of the capital Bogota.
Earlier this month seven people were killed in a bombing in a northwest Colombian village, an attack blamed on leftist rebels who have waged a guerrilla war for decades in the country.
Colombian authorities typically lay blame for such attacks on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), although violence in urban areas has ebbed in recent years under President Alvaro Uribe, who has aggressively pursued the FARC rebels in his vow to crush the group.
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