IBM, McDonald’s Bombed in Mexican Capital; Leftists Take Responsibility

MEXICO CITY —  Bombs went off at an IBM building, a McDonald’s and another popular restaurant in Mexico City early Thursday, the attorney general’s office said. The blasts caused minor damage but no injuries.

The same clandestine leftist group that bombed a Citibank building Sunday claimed responsibility for the blasts in a call to a radio station, Hector Pina, a spokesman for the Mexico City attorney general’s office, said.

The IBM office is located in the posh district of Polanco near Chapultepec Park. The McDonald’s is on the south side of the city. The third bomb damaged a Sanborn’s restaurant at a busy intersection in south-central Mexico City.

After the Citibank bombing, anonymous callers contacted several news organizations in Mexico City, claiming responsibility on behalf of the Revolutionary Worker Clandestine Union of the People Party, known by its Spanish acronym PROCUP.

The Citibank bomb, which went off Sunday night, was a powerful blast that damaged four nearby buildings in the northern industrial suburb of Vallejo.

PROCUP is a shadowy group that gained notoriety last year after the killing of two guards at the newspaper La Jornada. They were shot after the newspaper refused to accept a PROCUP news release. In a profile last year, Proceso magazine said PROCUP’s roots and doctrine of armed struggle go back to the 1960s.