One dead in Chile bombing

Policemen from a bomb disposal unit look for evidence on the site where an explosive device went off in downtown Santiago, Chile. (AFP/Martin Bernetti)

SANTIAGO: One person was killed when a homemade bomb went off near downtown Santiago early Thursday (Sep 25), law enforcement officials said following the latest in a series of recent explosions.

"The young man killed in the explosion may have been handling the homemade device when it went off," local prosecutor Claudio Orellana told reporters.

Orellana said the man sustained serious injuries at the scene of the blast and died a short time later. Doctors said his hand had been amputated and his skull fractured in the explosion. They put his age at 25 to 30 years old.

The bomb shook the Yungay neighborhood near the centre of the capital, where horrified witnesses saw the victim burn alive. "There's a human being on fire, bring buckets of water!" a witness could be heard screaming in an amateur video broadcast on Chilean TV.

Police cordoned off the area, where no major damage was reported. The bombing is the latest in a series of explosions that have left Chile on edge, in the worst violence to hit the nation in a quarter century.

Three people were arrested last week in connection with the most destructive attack, a blast at a Santiago subway station that injured 14 people on September 8.

Police are working to establish the identity of the victim in Thursday's blast and determine whether he was linked to the three arrested suspects, alleged members of an underground anarchist group.

The subway bombing was claimed by a group calling itself the "Cells of Fire Conspiracy," which said the attack was not meant to target civilians but the "structures of power."

The bomb that went off on Thursday was different from those used in the subway attack and a pair of recent police station bombings, though it had "certain components" in common with them, said prosecutor Orellana.

The bombing spree has shaken Santiago, considered by many the safest capital in Latin America. Officials said there have been some 200 unsolved bombings across the country over the past five years, targeting banks, gyms, embassies and restaurants and other public places.