15 killed by bomb 'meant for President'

Fifteen people were killed yesterday when a huge bomb intended to kill the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, today was discovered by police and detonated by suspected rebels, the authorities said yesterday.

Prosecutors claim the bomb, in a house near the airport in the southern city of Neiva, was to have been detonated as the President's plane passed overhead during a scheduled visit. The plan was to blow the aircraft out of the sky, they said.

But the suspected rebels detonated the bomb when police raided the house. An investigator with the prosecutor's office and nine police officers, including Neiva's chief of investigations, were among those killed. The blast wounded 30 people, destroyed five houses and severely damaged 30 others.

General Teodoro Campo, director of the Colombian National Police, said rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, were behind the attack.

President Uribe, who has survived several rebel assassination attempts, is launching a crackdown on the 38-year-old insurgency.

Farc was blamed for the bombing of an exclusive club in Bogota last week that killed 35 people and injured more than 100.