Colombia’s Marxist ELN rebels to blame for explosions – police

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s Marxist ELN rebels detonated four small explosive devices around the capital, Bogota, early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries but damaging a highway overpass and other structures, police told local media.

Propaganda materials from the National Liberation Army (ELN), which regularly attacks oil facilities in Latin America’s fourth largest economy, were left at the sites of the explosions, police told local La FM radio.

The attacks came nine days before President Juan Manuel Santos is scheduled to be inaugurated for his second term. The 2002 inauguration of hard-line former President Alvaro Uribe was marred by rebel bombings that killed 21 people.

Santos was re-elected in June on promises to end Colombia’s 50-year conflict with leftist rebels through a peace deal.

The government has been in negotiations with the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for 20 months. It recently announced preliminary talks with the ELN.

The ELN, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, took responsibility for an explosion in June near Bogota’s financial district that damaged a police station and injured three people.

(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Paul Simao)