Costa Rican president evacuated after blast heard near illegal mining zone

Security forces evacuated Costa Rica’s president on Friday during a tour of a mining area after a loud explosion rang out.

Conservative populist President Laura Fernandez later told reporters she was unharmed after the scare in the town of Crucitas near the border with Nicaragua.

Fernandez and several lawmakers were touring an area known for having unlicensed gold mines when the blast of unknown origin prompted bodyguards with guns to rush her away into a car, video footage from the scene showed.

“It felt like what you see in a movie,” Fernandez said. “They grab you by the hair, throw you to the ground and put you” in a car, she said.

“They examined me as per protocol, but I am fine,” she added.

The footage shows Fernandez initially lying on the ground after the explosion with bodyguards covering her as protection.

The president told reporters the incident showed what she described as the danger that exists in this area, where criminal gangs mine for gold illegally and pollute the environment.

“I strongly condemn today’s attack against the President (of Costa Rica),” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said in a statement on X.

“Organised crime cannot break us. I’m glad to know she is okay.”

On June 3, the government of this Central American country said it had received information about an alleged plot, hatched in a prison, to assassinate Fernandez.

Fernandez, 39, succeeded her political mentor, Rodrigo Chaves, as she took power in May.

She easily won the February 1 elections on a promise to crack down on crime in a country long considered one of the safest in the Americas.

In January, Chávez, too, said he was the target of an assassination plot, but the government never provided hard evidence of this.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua agreed in March to work together to crack down on illegal mining along their shared border.