SUSANNAH A. NESMITH
  Associated Press

  LA UNION, Colombia - A thunderous blast shook the earth, gouging a 3-foot-deep crater in the village and collapsing homes for 300 feet in every direction.

  The explosion was heard miles away at the farms where villagers had taken shelter to get away from the huge bomb left by guerrillas. They knew La Union was no more.

  No one was hurt, but the destruction of an entire village marked a new level of violence in Colombia's nearly 40 years of civil war. And it underlined the challenges facing President Alvaro Uribe.

  For more than a month, the people of La Union had lived in terror of the half-ton bomb in their village at the intersection of two dirt roads through rolling pasture lands.

  Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had hauled in the bomb in December, leaving it inside the nicest house. The rebels planned to detonate the bomb by remote control whenever an army patrol passed through.

  The guerrillas told the 17 families in the hamlet of rough wooden shacks and concrete-block houses that the bomb couldn't go off by accident, but said they should run at the first sight of soldiers.

  The terrified villagers sent their children and the old people to nearby farms. The others continued to do their daily work, but at night La Union became a ghost town - all were too scared to fall asleep at home.

  Finally, the pressure became unbearable. On Jan. 19, someone tipped off the army. Soldiers stormed in, but they couldn't deactivate the bomb and had to detonate it after clearing the area.

  The southern city of Neiva wasn't so lucky Friday. Seventeen people were killed when a bomb left by FARC rebels exploded as police searched a house. A week before that, a bomb killed 35 people in the capital, Bogota.

  Some of La Union's residents returned recently to see what they could salvage.

  Eriberto Zapata spent 10 years building his lavender-painted house. Now the concrete blocks are crumbled, and the roof is caved in. Only the broad porch still stands.

  "It's too much. It's too much to rebuild," Zapata said, his eyes welling with tears.

  At the shattered remains of a small store, the owner pulled a piece of the roof off a refrigerator and discovered the bottles of water and beer inside had survived the
  explosion.

  A group of women stood in the wrecked shop and wondered about the future.

  "It would be nice if the police came here, if the soldiers patrolled the town," one woman said softly, declining to give her name.

  That seems unlikely soon. Government forces abandoned this impoverished area to the rebels 20 years ago. The people of La Union, 185 miles south of Bogota, grew accustomed to the guerrillas, serving them in their cantinas and selling them supplies.

  Since taking office Aug. 7, Uribe has been urging people to report rebel activities, and someone in La Union did just that - the villagers won't say who for fear of reprisal. But the government is not in a position to reciprocate with protection.

  Uribe is beefing up the army with U.S. help, and the military is slowly regaining control of roads that have become some of the most dangerous in the world. But in a nation bigger than Texas and California combined, whose major cities are connected only by pitted two-lane roads that snake through towering mountains and bisect jungles, there are not enough soldiers and policemen to protect everything.

  On the highway that runs from Bogota toward La Union, troops guard bridges and patrol remote stretches. Banners hanging over the road urge Colombians to report suspicious activity to the army. One banner, near a military roadblock, says: "We are at war, and we are winning."

  But long before La Union, the highway deteriorates into rough gravel, then into a dirt track. The presence of security forces fades. Government troops enter La Union only occasionally. There are no police stationed nearby.

  For now, the villagers must get along as best they can, hoping the government will at least provide promised help for rebuilding.

  They plan to put back up their homes and businesses because they have nowhere else to go. They do not want to join the estimated 2 million Colombians who have been displaced by the war.

  A man who identified himself only as Jose pulled a table leg from the rubble of what used to be his barbecue restaurant.

  "We'll work, as we have always worked," he said.