BOGOTA, Colombia -- A car bomb exploded in a shopping center parking lot in
                  Medellin, injuring more than 40 people and setting nearby vehicles ablaze.

                  There were no immediate reports of fatalities from Wednesday's explosion,
                  which created a scene of devastation in an underground parking garage in the
                  upscale The Treasure shopping mall.

                  "It was a super-strong explosion," said witness Fernando Monsalve, who described seeing the
                  wounded stagger from the smoke-filled garage.

                  No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest
                  city and located 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital, Bogota.

                  "The only thing one can believe is that this was the action of madmen," said Medellin Mayor Luis
                  Perez Gutierrez.

                  The commander of the Medellin Fire Department, Capt. Gabriel Jaime Bedoya, told Caracol radio
                  that 41 injured people had been taken to hospitals.

                  Health Department spokesman Wanda Galesky said she knew of 42 injured people, and estimated
                  that 30 percent of them had serious wounds.

                  Leftist rebels and a right-wing paramilitary group are battling for control of the Colombian
                  countryside in a worsening 36-year civil war.

                  The car-bombing recalled the days when the
                  Medellin Cartel, a drug-trafficking gang, waged a terror campaign in the 1980s
                  and early 1990s to fight extradition to the United States. The Medellin Cartel was
                  wiped out by police action, with its top leader Pablo Escobar dying in a police
                  shootout in 1993.

                  Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.