Reply #34: Bolivia police bust group they say planned to kill Bolivian president, vice president

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia police bust group they say planned to kill Bolivian president, vice president
CARLOS VALDEZ | Associated Press Writer
8:44 PM CDT, April 16, 2009

http://snsimages.tribune.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2009-04/46343399.jpg

A Bolivian police officer displays seized guns taken in the city of Santa Cruz
from an armed group at a police station in La Paz, Thursday, April 16, 2009.
Bolivian police said they broke an armed international group on Thursday
that was plotting to assassinate President Evo Morales and the vice president.
Three suspects were killed and two were arrested in a half-hour long shootout
with officers in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, police said. The area is the
center of political opposition to Morales.(AP Photo/Juan Karita) (Juan Karita,
AP / April 16, 2009)

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian police foiled an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales, killing three men in a 30-minute gunbattle with a mysterious group that included suspects from Hungary, Ireland and possibly Croatia, government officials said Thursday.

Police had attempted to arrest the men in the center of Santa Cruz, an eastern Bolivian city and hub of anti-Morales sentiment, but they fled to a hotel where an intense shootout took place around 4 a.m., witnesses and police said.

The alleged assassins detonated a grenade inside the hotel, blowing out its windows amid the gunfight, according to police. Three of the suspects, identified by state media as Hungarian, Irish and Bolivian, were killed.

A second Hungarian was arrested, along with a retired Bolivian soldier who had fought in conflicts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, state prosecutor Jorge Gutierrez said.

Police raided a storage facility in a nearby park, confiscating explosives, high-caliber telescopic weapons and what appeared to be travel plans for Morales' motorcade, Police Commander Victor Hugo Escobar told reporters.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-bolivia-assassination-plot,0,1036527.story