At least six killed in Peru car bomb

At least four bodies could be seen in the rubble, including a boy wearing roller skates, radio reports said.

Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi said the blast killed two policemen and four other people. A US official said no American citizens were hurt.

Bush is due to arrive in Lima on Saturday to meet Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and leaders from Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The blast happened at local time 10:45 pm (3.45am Thursday), in an affluent neighbourhood of late-night restaurants, cinemas and shops.

Deputy fire commander Juan Piperis said there were unconfirmed reports of nine dead. He said 30 to 40 people had been injured and taken to a nearby hospital. He estimated about 66 lbs of explosives had been used in the attack.

Bush’s planned trip to Lima ‘‘has activated terrorist groups of diverse origins that are trying to intimidate us just as they tried to intimidate the United States,’’ Rospigliosi said.

‘‘But they are not going to intimidate us just as they did not intimidate the United States with the September 11 attacks.’’

Rospigliosi said he was ‘‘certain that there was no way President Bush will change his plans to visit Peru because of this terrorist attack.’’

The street was littered with shattered glass, shards of brick and concrete and charred car parts.

The blast damaged at least 10 vehicles in the area. A small police truck nearby was left mangled, its bonnet peeled back and shredded.

‘‘I will not permit democracy to be undermined by terrorist attacks,’’ Toledo said in Monterrey, Mexico, where he had just arrived for a UN conference.

‘‘We will not give one centimetre. I am going to apply a hard-line policy within the framework of the law.’’

A hotel and bank across the street from the embassy were damaged in the blast, witnesses said. The embassy, a fortress-like structure with narrow windows, suffered no apparent damage. It sits behind a 20 ft wall and is set far back from the street.

In a separate blast yesterday, a small bomb exploded just before dawn outside an office of Peru’s Spanish-owned telephone company, police said. The explosion damaged the first floor of a Telefonica payment office in northern Lima but caused no injuries, the company said.

On Tuesday night, a grenade was thrown from a moving car onto a street in northeastern Lima. There were no injuries, police said.

Neither of Peru’s largely defeated guerrilla movements - the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement - have taken responsibility for the incidents.

Both groups terrorised Peru in the 1980s and early 1990s with car bombings, assassinations and sabotage, although neither has set off explosives in Lima in several years.

The last car bomb that went off in Lima occurred in May 1997 and was set by the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. The rebel group was greatly weakened after the capture of its founder and other important leaders in the 1990s.

In recent years it has had a presence only in remote jungle areas.