Colombians march for peace

Up to 20,000 people turned out for the march

Thousands of Colombians have marched through the capital, Bogota, to call for peace after the car bomb attack which killed 33 at an elite city club on Friday.

Wearing white T-shirts, people from all walks of life turned out to chant "life is sacred" and call for an end to the decades-old civil war.

This country has suffered so much

Luis Eduardo Cubillos
marcher

No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion which ripped through the multi-storey Club Nogal, but the government has accused the country's largest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The bomb attack, which also injured 162 people, was the biggest in Bogota in a decade and shocked city residents more used to a civil war fought in the countryside.

"Here we all are, rich and poor, agreeing that there must be peace," said Nora Vargas de Galindo, 66, as she marched with her husband, a retired lorry driver.

The demonstrators, who carried bouquets of flowers and Colombian flags, were joined by Vice President Francisco Santos and Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus.

They walked along Bogota's fashionable Seventh Avenue, on which the burnt-out Club Nogal stands.

Child victims

Luis Eduardo Cubillos, an unemployed accountant, said that no-one had the "right to kill innocent people". The dead at the devastated club include six children.

CLUB NOGAL

Advertised itself as "one of the most important corporate, social and cultural centres in Bogota"

Featured children's and young people's areas - they were due to close just minutes before the blast

Other facilities included: five eating areas, an art gallery and 10th-floor swimming-pool

With tears rolling down his face and clutching the hand of his five-year-old son, Mr Cubillos said:

"This country has suffered so much. I brought my son here to help explain the situation in Colombia but also so he sees that most Colombians are good people."

The rebels, he added, had lost sight of their original ideal of helping the Colombian people.

One man dressed in a white military-style uniform with gold buttons and a badge reading "General of Peace" handed out flyers calling for President Alvaro Uribe to open direct peace talks with the rebels.

Other marchers called for the return of the death penalty.

The march ended with an open-air Mass in a park at which Roman Catholic Cardinal Pedro Rubiano urged people to continue peaceful protests "in the face of terrorism".

The BBC's Jeremy McDermott reports from Bogota that, despite the march against violence, the government is talking of more war, rather then peace.

Four bomb technicians from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms went to work at the scene of the blast on Sunday under an agreement with the Colombian Government.

Vice President Santos has already said he is in "no doubt" that the FARC were behind the attack.