MEXICO CITY – A bomb that exploded Friday near the city's police headquarters was carried by an unidentified man wearing two layers of clothing, police said yesterday.
They said the man died in the blast and that no evidence had yet been found linking him to a guerrilla group or drug cartel.
Investigators believe the man intended to plant the bomb at police headquarters, about 300 yards from where he was found, but it went off in his hand.
One theory was that he wore a suit over a change of clothes because he wanted to evade police after the bombing.
It remained unclear whether a young woman – one of two people wounded in the attack – had been accompanying the man or crossed paths with him at the wrong time.
The woman, Tania Vázquez, 22, lives in the city's Tepito section, two blocks from the home of Rogelio Mena, a suspected member of the Sinaloa drug cartel whom city police arrested Tuesday, the newspaper El Universal said.
That coincidence led the newspaper to conclude that the bomber had links with the cartel, but city and federal authorities said there was no hard evidence that drug dealers had ordered the bombing.
Vázquez had yet to be interviewed, they noted. She was in stable condition yesterday at a hospital guarded by police.
A man who was wounded in the bombing, Javier González, was taken to police headquarters so he could talk to investigators, Police Chief Joel Ortega said.
The federal Attorney General's Office issued a statement Friday saying the bombing “cannot be attributed to armed or subversive groups” because the device bore none of the earmarks of those that subversive groups have planted on pipelines and in a Mexico City skyscraper in the past year.
Federal investigators said they had not ruled out the possibility that the bomber had acted alone because of a personal grudge.
The newspaper La Jornada said the bomb's core had contained C4, a commercial plastic explosive, mixed with a chemical to make it less stable. The bomber wrapped pellets around the explosive, the newspaper said.
However, Ortega said the bomb had held gunpowder, pieces of metal and pellets, not plastic explosive.
