Bombs Kill 1 in Colombia; Reporter Slain

BOGOTA, Colombia —  Three bombs exploded Sunday in the city of Cali, killing a security guard, and a newspaper that has crusaded against Colombia’s cocaine barons said that one of its reporters was slain by thugs.

The bombings in Cali, headquarters of one of Colombia’s big cocaine cartels, occurred shortly after midnight at two banks and a shopping center, said Col. Rozo Julio Navarro, chief of the national police force in the city, 180 miles southwest of Bogota.

Navarro told Colombian radio that the bomb at the shopping center killed a guard. He said another bomb was found at a bank and defused.

Meanwhile, police in Buenaventura, northwest of Cali on the Pacific coast, said journalist Guillermo Gomez Murillo was shot to death Saturday night while watching television in his parents’ home.

Editor Slain in 1986

Gomez Murillo was a correspondent for the Bogota newspaper El Espectador, whose editor was slain by drug traffickers in 1986. The paper’s offices were heavily damaged Sept. 2 in a car bomb attack.

El Espectador said Sunday that Gomez Murillo was known “for having revealed anomalies in the administration of this part of the country.”

In other developments:

-- A rocket or mortar was fired at the U.S. Embassy in central Bogota on Sunday night, but it failed to explode, the embassy’s Marine guard said. He said the projectile knocked some concrete out of the wall but caused no further damage.

-- The current leading presidential candidate of the ruling Liberal Party, Alberto Santofimio Botero, ortedly called for an end to extraditions during a speech.

“I do not support giving up Colombians to be tried under someone else’s roof,” he said.

Under emergency measures imposed Aug. 18, President Virgilio Barco Vargas has resumed extraditions to the United States of suspected drug traffickers.

So far, one person has been extradited to the United States, and extradition proceedings are under way against two others.