BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Explosives planted in a hotel blow up, killing five people. A major TV and radio network is bombed. An electrical substation is dynamited. A bus is torched on a major highway after passengers are forcibly removed.

Rebel attacks across Colombia over the weekend blacked out towns, shut down roads and have shattered notions that Colombia's main rebel group is on its knees and poses little threat to this Andean nation. A rebel commander warned that "this is only the beginning."

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, have not been this aggressive since President Alvaro Uribe took office two years ago, pledging to impose order on a nation plagued by drug trafficking and a leftist insurgency, now in its 40th year, waged by two rebel groups.

Uribe, backed by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid, has waged an unprecedented crackdown on the FARC, centering on a year-old Plan Patriot offensive against the rebels' jungle strongholds in sparsely populated southeastern Colombia. But the FARC, said to number from 12,000-17,000 combatants, are present in the Andes mountains which slice across the center of the country, along the Pacific coast in the west, in the oil-rich northeast, in the south along Ecuador's border and even have "militia" operating in the cities.

The weekend attacks occurred in most of those places. The bloodiest was in the village of Puerto Toledo, 105 miles (170 kilometers) southeast of Bogota, where FARC rebels detonated a bomb in a hotel Sunday, killing three government soldiers and two civilians, including a boy, said Gen. Reinaldo Castellanos, commander of the Colombian Army.

Rebels also detonated a car bomb Sunday night outside the offices of RCN television and radio in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, Castellanos said. A watchman and sound engineer were wounded in the blast, which heavily damaged the RCN facilities.

"We will keep working amid the ruins," vowed Antonio Jose Caballero, an RCN radio reporter.

The rebels also blew up a gas pipeline in central Colombia's Huila state and an electrical substation in Putumayo state in the south, knocking out power to la Hormiga and other towns, local media reported. At a FARC roadblock in Tolima state in western Colombia, rebels torched a passenger bus, blocking a highway to the capital.

On Saturday, four soldiers were killed and five wounded in a FARC minefield near the town of Dabeiba, 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Bogota, the army's 17th Brigade reported.

The FARC, which along with the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN, has been battling a succession of elected government for four decades, threatened bloodier attacks.

"This is only the beginning of what is coming in the country against the Alvaro Uribe regime," FARC commander Raul Reyes told local Noticias Uno television in a written statement that was broadcast Saturday night.

Reyes said Uribe's plans to wipe out the rebels or force them to negotiate a peace deal will fail.

"More than ever, our expert war combatants, located in every nook and cranny throughout the country ... will put an end to this policy," Reyes said.

Castellanos, speaking to local Caracol radio, said Colombia's armed forces would continue attacking the FARC.

Uribe has not commented on the weekend attacks, but last week pledged to push forward with the Plan Patriot offensive.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.