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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The killing of a fugitive Puerto Rican nationalist in a shootout with the FBI has sparked ''rancor and rage'' and prompted an increase in security at police stations and federal buildings, the island's police chief said Wednesday.
It's too early to know if the slaying of Filiberto Ojeda Rios will spark a resurgence of pro-independence violence seen in the U.S. territory between the 1970s and 1990s, but officials said they're taking no chances.
''You always take precautions when there are threats, but until now we haven't received any specific information about planned acts of violence,'' Puerto Rico police chief Pedro Toledo said.
Thousands of mourners, many waving Puerto Rican flags and singing revolutionary ballads, turned out Tuesday for Ojeda Rios' funeral, four days after he was shot to death by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in southwestern Puerto Rico for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in Connecticut.
The militant nationalist group led by Ojeda Rios, the Macheteros, or Cane Cutters, vowed to avenge the slain leader's death in a statement read to mourners by the funeral's master of ceremonies.
''Yankees murderers, your days are numbered! . . . The fight will continue now and until the Yankees leave our soil,'' read the letter, which was signed by a Commander Guasabara ''from somewhere on the island.''
The FBI said they shot the 72-year-old after he opened fire on agents, but later announced an independent probe into the shooting after local officials questioned the bureau's handling of the incident and Ojeda Rios' widow, who escaped from the farmhouse unharmed, said the FBI fired first.
The shooting sparked isolated street demonstrations in which U.S. flags were burned and two McDonald's restaurants defaced with graffiti.
The latest backlash against the U.S. government is the largest since an errant bomb killed a civilian guard on the island of Vieques in 1999. That incident sparked several years of protests, eventually prompting the U.S. Navy to abandon bombing exercises there in 2003.