Car bomb explodes in Colombian capital

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Thursday outside a radio station in Colombia's capital, injuring at nine people and blowing out windows in the first major attack since President Juan Manuel Santos took office at the weekend.

A damaged bus with its front window blown out sat abandoned on a main avenue near Caracol radio, panicked residents stood in the streets, and investigators picked over the wreckage of the exploded car after the rare bombing in the capital.

"This is a terrorist attack," Santos told reporters at the site of the blast without giving details on those responsible. "I believe this is a message, this is not gratuitous."

Santos, a former defence minister, took office on Saturday promising to keep up former President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed war on leftist FARC guerrillas and cocaine traffickers and his pro-business policies.

Bombings and attacks on Colombian cities dropped sharply after Uribe took office in 2002. Violence from the country's war ebbed as Uribe's security campaign sent troops out to battle leftist rebels and cocaine kingpins.

A FARC bomb killed nine people in the Pacific coastal town of Buenaventura in March this year. A bombing at a Blockbuster video store in Bogota killed two people in 2009 in an attack authorities said was linked to extortion by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The main anchorman of Caracol, one of the country's major radio stations, at times has received threats from armed groups and has in the past left Colombia for his safety.

Windows as high as 30 stories were blasted out in buildings along Bogota's main 7th Avenue and glass was still falling onto the streets after the early morning attack.

"I woke up and my floor and bed were covered in glass," said Mauricio Marentes, 28, a geologist who lives on the fourth floor of a building overlooking the blast site.

Markets mainly dismissed the bombing, and the Colombian peso rose after trading began on expectations of strong investment flows in Latin America's No. 4 oil producer. The peso risen more than 11.5 percent so far this year.

"We believe the episode does not change the economic or market outlook in any way," Barclays Capital said in a research note to clients after the blast.

Uribe sent troops out to reclaim areas once under FARC rebel control, and Latin America's oldest left-wing insurgency has been smashed to its weakest in decades. Several top commanders have been killed or captured and the FARC ranks have been thinned by desertions.

But the rebel group is still a force in rural areas where it has often allied itself with traffickers and paramilitary gangs to benefit from the cocaine trade. Guerrillas now rely on ambushes and homemade landmines to harry army patrols.

(Additional reporting by Hugh Bronstein, Luis Jaime Acosta and Nelson Bocanegra; editing by Vicki Allen and Jackie Frank)