BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Suspected FARC rebels fired mortar shells on the presidential palace and a nearby slum, killing 14 people just blocks away from where right-winger Alvaro Uribe was being sworn in as president on Wednesday pledging to get tough with the Marxist guerrillas.
Despite heavy security -- including 20,000 soldiers and police and a U.S. surveillance plane -- three mortars smashed into the palace, wounding three people and causing superficial damage to the building Uribe will occupy for the next four years.
In an apparent misfire, an equal number of mortars fell on a nearby Bogota shantytown, killing three children and 11 other people -- just as the inauguration of the clean-cut, 50-year-old lawyer began in Congress.
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