Shining Path Suspected In Peru Blast

A car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy in Lima, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens in an audacious late night attack just three days before President Bush visits the Andean capital. U.S. officials said Thursday that Shining Path rebels were suspected.

Bush planned to go ahead with his visit to Lima, saying Thursday he would not be dissuaded by "two-bit terrorists." Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, promising to apply "all the weight of the law," cut short a visit to a U.N. summit in Mexico to rush home after the blast.

The Wednesday night explosion left the upscale street outside the embassy strewn with rubble, shattered glass and the bodies of the dead — including at least two police officers and an 18-year-old man wearing roller skates. No Americans were among the at least nine people confirmed dead.

There was no claim of responsibility. But some U.S. officials pointed to Shining Path, a rebel movement that killed thousands of people in a campaign of bombings, assassinations and massacres in the 1980s and 1990s. Many Peruvians feared the bombing meant a resurgence of violence by Shining Path, which was largely crushed by the late 1990s.

Bush said he would still go to Lima, where he is scheduled to arrive Saturday for a meeting with Toledo and leaders from Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador.

"I'm sure the president there did everything he can to make Lima safe for our trip," Bush said in the Oval Office. "You know, two-bit terrorists aren't going to prevent me from doing what we need to do, and that is to promote our friendship in the hemisphere."

"We might have an idea" who set off the bomb, Bush said. "They've been around before." Bush did not identify the suspected group — but he nodded when a reporter asked if Shining Path was on the upsurge.

Bush spoke before heading to Monterrey, Mexico, where he was to attend a U.N. conference on poverty before he begins his first Latin American visit since becoming president. Toledo decided to leave the Monterrey conference after delivering a speech Thursday to return home a day early.

"The courageous Peruvian people will not allow terrorism to return in Peru," Toledo the summit. "We will apply one heavy hand, and with the other the law. We will apply all the necessary firmness and all the weight of the law."

Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi said Thursday the location of the blast was "a clear signal ... that it was an attack against the visit of Bush and against Peru's democracy." An Interior Ministry spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Peruvian authorities have not ruled out that a foreign terrorist group carried out the bombing.

In Washington, a U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity that the bomb had some of the hallmarks of previous Shining Path attacks. A State Department official said Shining Path is the "likely suspect" in the Lima attack.

The State Department official said Shining Path was also suspected in a separate blast Wednesday in which a small bomb exploded outside an office of Peru's Spanish-owned telephone company, causing damage but no injuries.

The Maoist-inspired Shining Path, which once numbered as many as 10,000 fighters, largely fell apart after the 1992 capture of its founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, and a fierce crackdown by the government. Its last car bombing in Lima was in 1997.

But the government says the movement still has about 500 combatants hiding out in the jungles of eastern Peru, and officials announced in December they had broken up efforts to form a Shining Path cell in the capital to plot bombing attacks, including against the U.S. Embassy.

"I pray it doesn't start again," Regina Fetzer, 25, said of the possibility of a return of Shining Path violence. Thursday morning, she inspected the damage to her Volkswagen Jetta near the scene of the attack.

The car bomb ripped through a district of upscale shops and restaurants at about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, but did not damage the fortress-like embassy, which is set far back from the street.

The blast shattered windows in a nearby bank and hotel building and damaged at least 10 cars, including one that apparently contained the bomb. A small police truck was mangled, its hood peeled back and shredded.

Deputy fire commander Juan Piperis said at least 30 people were injured and taken to a nearby hospital. He estimated about 66 pounds of explosives had been used in the bomb.

"I saw a mutilated body to my right and another on a stairway on the other side," said Jose Victor Ortiz, 22, a business school student who lives nearby. "When I crouched down, I saw a policeman thrown down on the ground. He had glass encrusted in his cheek and his forehead and he was asking me to help him and that he couldn't feel his legs."

Some 30,000 people died in the violence of the 1980s and 1990s during the insurgencies of the Shining Path and the smaller and less deadly Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The Tupac Amaru movement is best known for a four-month siege of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in 1996-97.

Guzman, Shining Path's leader, is now serving a life sentence in prison. In the late 1990s, the government launched a tough campaign - including secret military courts that brought international criticism - and jailed hundreds of the movement's members.