LA PAZ - Bolivia's government on Monday denied accusations that it had led a targeted attack on ex-President Evo Morales, whose car was shot at on Sunday, claiming the former leader's convoy had fired on special anti-narcotics police who were carrying out a patrol.

       Morales claims that the government had attempted to assassinate him when bullets struck his car in the early hours of Sunday, marking a new chapter of tensions in the Andean nation between Morales and former ally President Luis Arce.

       Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo said during a press conference that the FELCN anti-drug trafficking unit were carrying out a standard highway patrol when Morales' convoy shot at police and ran over an officer.

       Morales had said in a radio interview on Sunday that he had indeed shot back at police after they opened fire.

       Morales' vehicles were suspected of transporting drugs, according to the government.

       Morales, meanwhile, called the allegations that authorities were carrying out an anti-drug trafficking operation false.

       "If that were the case, why did your elite military and police team shoot more than 18 times at the vehicles I was traveling in?" he wrote on X.

       Del Castillo added that Morales had instructed his vehicles to be burned after the run-in, destroying any evidence before it could be collected.

       "If he had really been victim of an assassination attempt, it would have been in his interest to leave them intact" so that investigators could search them to collect evidence, del Castillo said. REUTERS