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6 missing after army explosions
30/12/2007 10:32 - (SA)
Bogota - Six people are missing and eight injured after a series of explosions ripped through an army base in the Colombian city of Medellin on Saturday, army officials said.
The first of at least six large blasts in Colombia's second largest city was apparently triggered by a grenade that detonated inside a weapons arsenal, according to witness accounts cited by local media. Smaller explosions followed in the afternoon.
General Luis Roberto Pico, head of the army's 7th division in Medellin, said the missing could be inside the incinerated arsenal. He did not say whether the missing were presumed dead.
Earlier, Alfredo Munoz, head of civil defence in Medellin, told Caracol Radio that at least two people had been killed during the blasts.
While ruling out the possibility of an attack, Pico said "we still have to determine what exactly happened".
'Forced us to the floor'
Soldiers from a counter-guerrilla company "were handing in their weapons when a grenade went off for whatever reason," Luis Ferney Berrio, a soldier who was near the arsenal, told RCN radio earlier. "The shock wave forced all of us to the floor."
Panicked residents could be seen running for safety after the first blast, which sent a large fireball and plumes of black smoke skyward above the Bombona battalion in Colombia's second largest city.
Two army helicopters dousing the flames with water were needed to bring the blaze under control.
A welcome ceremony for 50 conscript soldiers was taking place at the time of the explosion, witnesses said.
- AP
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