U.S. suspects Peru rebels in bombing

WASHINGTON (AP) - The car bomb attack near the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, was probably intended by Shining Path guerrillas to discredit the Peruvian leader before President Bush's visit on Saturday, U.S. officials said. 

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, which took place late Wednesday. Both intelligence and defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday it bears hallmarks of previous attacks by Shining Path, a Maoist rebel group. 

The bombers used a simple fuse and detonated it outside a bank, similar to previous attacks by the group, one intelligence official said. The bomb was believed to have been made of a potent mix of ammonium nitrate, a petroleum product such as fuel oil, and dynamite weighing about 66 pounds. 

The blast shattered windows and destroyed nearby cars, leaving the street in front of the U.S. Embassy compound littered with bodies and wreckage. 

No U.S. citizens were among the nine people confirmed killed. One of the dead was a Peruvian police officer assigned to guard the embassy, which remained open, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Thursday. 

Supporters of the group recently were distributing anti-U.S. propaganda and threatening to disrupt Bush's visit by embarrassing Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, officials said. The United States has obtained some other, unspecified information suggesting Shining Path was planning an attack, a U.S. official said. 

The State Department issued a public announcement Thursday night advising American citizens in Peru to be vigilant and avoid crowds and public areas, particularly those where Americans are known to congregate. 

``American citizen visitors and residents in Peru should review their personal security and exercise caution,'' it said. 

Shining Path is also the likely suspect in an attack early Wednesday on a branch office of the Telefonica phone company in the town of Los Olivos, about 10 miles from the capital, a State Department official said. 

The Shining Path guerrilla movement - labeled by the United States as a terrorist group - aims to install a communist state through a peasant uprising. 

The group tried to overthrow the Peruvian government in the 1980s and 1990s with waves of bombings, assassinations and peasant massacres. Shining Path attempted several bombings of U.S. diplomatic buildings in Peru in the early 1990s. 

The fighting left 30,000 dead, most rural people killed in the cross fire between Shining Path and government troops. The fighting included insurgencies by the Marxist rebels in the smaller Tupac Amaru movement, best known for a four-month siege of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in 1996-97. 

But the 1992 capture of Shining Path's founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, and a fierce crackdown by the government devastated the group, though its ideals still inspire a Maoist insurgency fighting a bitter war on the other side of the world, in Nepal. A man known as ``Artemio'' is now believed to head the organization, officials said. 

Shining Path's last car bombing in Lima was in 1997, and it has fallen from a peak of perhaps 10,000 fighters to fewer than 500 combatants in scattered bands in jungle valleys of eastern Peru. Many credit the success to former President Alberto Fujimori's iron-fisted tactics, including the use of secret tribunals. 

At the time, the United States criticized those tribunals; it is now considering similar courts for alleged al-Qaida terrorists captured in the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. 

Peruvian 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. 

President Bush called the attackers ``two-bit terrorists'' and went ahead with plans to visit Lima on Saturday to meet with Toledo and leaders from Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador. He is also traveling to Mexico and El Salvador during the trip. 

While most of the world has focused on terrorism by Islamic extremists since Sept. 11, many other violent organizations remain active. An offshoot of the Red Brigades terror group said Thursday it killed Italian economist Marco Biagi, who was working on bitterly contested changes in Italy's labor laws which he favored loosening. 

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