Bogota, Colombia - Leftist Colombian rebels detonated several bombs in an underground sewer on Thursday, destroying 25 homes, killing three children and wounding 35 other people in the first major attack since the government called off peace efforts this week.
The army said the National Liberation Army (ELN) detonated the bombs in the northern town of San Francisco overnight, apparently in a failed attempt to destroy the local police headquarters.
President Andres Pastrana, who broke off contact with the ELN on Tuesday, said the attack's toll on civilians made the prospects for peace even more unlikely.
"They have clearly shown their desire for war ... they keep inflicting violence on this nation," Pastrana told reporters. "They are the ones who keep diminishing peace prospects."
The 5 000-member Cuban-inspired ELN said on Wednesday chances of reaching a peace deal with this government were "almost dead" and accused Pastrana of preaching "rhetoric."
Pastrana, in turn, called the rebels "obstinate."
The 46-year-old president leaves office next August, and has dedicated his term to so-far unsuccessful efforts to clinch peace agreements with leftist rebels.
He had been engaged in an on-again, off-again dialogue with the ELN since 1999. The group was seen as tiring of war after heavy military losses at the hands of the army and far-right paramilitary outlaws.
Paramilitaries demand ELN surrender
The illegal paramilitary fighters demanded the ELN's immediate surrender on Thursday.
"Accept it: Your systematic surrender to the government and to us is the only alternative that would allow you to survive physically and politically," the statement read.
"And perhaps the Colombian people can forgive the 36 years of misery, death and pain you have left in your wake."
Colombia's conflict has claimed 40 000 mainly civilian lives in the past decade, making the war-torn Andean nation the most violent in the Americas.
The ELN last broke off formal peace talks on April 19, with its leaders denouncing what they called "a criminal association" against them by the Colombian army and paramilitaries.
The ranks of the paramilitaries - formed in the 1970s by cattle ranchers and landowners as self-defence groups - have grown exponentially to an estimated 8 000 as the army has failed to defeat the rebels.
Pastrana has been engaged in peace talks with a larger Marxist rebel group, the FARC, for two and a half years. He granted the FARC a Switzerland-sized enclave in southern Colombia in 1999 to lure them into talks, but despite the gesture fighting has escalated.
Army General Eduardo Herrera said troops were searching for the ELN bombers, who were thought to be still near San Francisco in mountainous Antioquia province.
