By IANS
Bogota : One person was killed and seven others injured in a bomb attack at the office of a candidate for the post of mayor of the southern Colombian town of Puerto Asis, authorities said.
Janeth Coral, sister of mayoral hopeful Jorge Coral, was killed in Monday’s blast, according to authorities in Mocoa, the capital of Putumayo province.
Police did not point to any suspects, but drug smugglers, right-wing paramilitaries and units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC plague the province, which lies on the border with Ecuador, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
Jorge Coral belongs to a party that supports Colombia’s conservative president, Alvaro Uribe.
Twenty-seven candidates have been killed since campaigning began for next Sunday’s nationwide provincial and municipal elections, according to officials in Bogota, who blame the FARC for about half of those slayings.
A pre-dawn bombing Monday at the campaign headquarters of a candidate for governor of the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca caused no casualties and only minor damage, authorities said.
They said the explosion shattered windows at the Cali offices of Juan Carlos Abadia, another candidate allied with Uribe.
A member of the assembly in the neighbouring province of Cauca, Elmer Duran, was slain Sunday, while Eduardo Monje, a mayoral candidate of Milan, a town in the southern jungle province of Caqueta, was slightly wounded in one arm when he was fired upon from the shore while travelling down a river by boat.
Colombians will go to the polls Oct 28 to elect provincial governors and legislators, as well as mayors and town councillors.