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MEXICO CITY - Bombs exploded at Mexican political and financial targets on Monday, rattling a country already nervous about unrest in a poor southern state and a deep political rift from an acrimonious election in July.
No one was injured in the blasts at Mexico's top electoral court, an opposition party's headquarters and a Canadian-owned bank in the capital.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombings.
A door was damaged and windows blown out at the electoral court, known as the Trife, which angered leftists in September for ruling that conservative candidate Felipe Calderon won July's presidential election.
Judges threw out claims of fraud by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who held street protests that paralyzed the center of the capital for six weeks.
Glass and ceiling panels covered the floor of an annex building at the headquarters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, near one of the city's main streets.
Ulises Ruiz, the PRI governor of Oaxaca state, is embroiled in a five-month conflict with protesters demanding he resign. Some 15 people have died and federal police clashed with demonstrators there last week.
An explosion also tore apart the metal and glass facade of a branch of Canada's Scotiabank in the south of Mexico City. A fourth bomb at another bank failed to go off and police found and deactivated a fifth device in a diner near the PRI headquarters.
The Foreign Ministry was evacuated when a caller warned of a bomb there but it was a false alarm, a ministry source said.
Peso drops
Mexico's peso weakened 0.73 per cent on news of the bombings but later recovered ground.
The bombings involved bigger devices than those sometimes set off in apparently politically motivated attacks on foreign banks in Mexico.
"If these bombs had been put in other locations they could have been lethal to a lot of people," Mexico City Police Chief Joel Ortega said.
Calderon, who takes office on December 1, condemned the bombings.
"The president-elect reiterates his belief that political or social demands should be made via institutional channels and with full respect for the law," his office said in a statement.
Calderon, a conservative former minister in President Vicente Fox's government, inherits a nation divided by the presidential election.
He won by less than 1 percentage point and opinion polls show more than 30 per cent of Mexicans believe he won by fraud, despite the court and international observers declaring the race free of vote-rigging.
The crisis in Oaxaca, a tourist state famous for its mezcal liquor, also could blight his first days in office.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the state capital on Sunday to call on Ruiz to quit. The governor, who critics say is authoritarian and corrupt, refuses to step down.
Protesters, who have paralyzed Oaxaca City with barricades in recent months, denied any involvement in the Mexico City bombings.
"We have nothing to do with that. Our fight is peaceful and democratic," protest organizer Flavio Sosa told Reuters.
- REUTERS
