LIMA, Peru -- Peru's president vowed Thursday to use a "heavy hand" to put down terrorism in his country after a car bomb blast outside the U.S. Embassy killed nine people and raised fears of a comeback by the deadly Shining Path guerrilla movement.

Peruvian officials said the attack was timed ahead of a visit by President Bush to Lima this weekend. Bush dismissed the bombing by what he called "two-bit terrorists" and said he would go ahead with the visit.

Shining Path blamed

No group took responsibility for Wednesday night's explosion, the worst terrorist attack in Peru in five years. But some U.S. officials and Peruvian counterinsurgency experts pointed to the Shining Path, a rebel movement that killed thousands in a campaign of bombings, assassinations and massacres until it was all but crushed in the 1990s.

Leader offers support

President Alejandro Toledo left a U.N. conference in Monterrey, Mexico, a day early, telling leaders gathered there before he headed home: "The courageous Peruvian people will not allow terrorism to return in Peru."

"We will apply one heavy hand, and with the other the law. We will apply all the necessary firmness and all the weight of the law," he said. "I will not rest in this task, and I count on the support of you all."

The blast from an estimated 66 pounds of explosives shattered windows and wrecked nearby cars, leaving the upscale street in front of the U.S. Embassy strewn with bodies, including two policemen and an 18-year-old man wearing roller skates. No Americans were among the nine people confirmed dead.

"It's terrible. It looks as if we are returning to the terrorism we knew before," said 42-year-old Gonzalo Albin, who lives within three blocks of the explosion site.

"Bush is coming Saturday. There's still time for them to do more."

Bush, who headed to Monterrey on Thursday, is to meet Toledo and the leaders of Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador in Lima on his first trip to South America since becoming president. He will also go to El Salvador during the trip.