Police Murders Colombia

As government troops sought to retake a besieged frontier town, the Red Cross said Monday that 60 police were killed when guerrillas overran a police post over the weekend. More than 40 officers were taken prisoner. Ten civilians also were killed as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, fighters overran Mitu, capital of Vaupes province near Brazil, in an attack that began before dawn Sunday.

As government troops sought to retake a besieged frontier town, the Red Cross said Monday that 60 police were killed when guerrillas overran a police post over the weekend. More than 40 officers were taken prisoner. Ten civilians also were killed as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, fighters overran Mitu, capital of Vaupes province near Brazil, in an attack that began before dawn Sunday.

Leftist guerrillas on Saturday killed 26 police officers guarding an oil field in southern Colombia and set off 11 bombs in the capital, causing one injury but no deaths. About 300 rebels belonging to the Simon Bolivar Coordinating Front used automatic weapons and grenades to attack 32 police officers guarding the Orito oil field in the jungle near the border with Ecuador, officials reported.

Fighting raged all day Sunday in a remote southeastern town after about 800 leftist rebels attacked a police base, killing at least four officers, wounding nine and cutting off communications. The guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rained homemade missiles on the police garrison in Mitu, capital of Vaupes state, where 120 officers were stationed, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano told a news conference. The same type of missiles were used in an Aug.

Gunmen in the cocaine capital of Medellin sprayed a patrol car with bullets, killing two officers and wounding two others. The four were going off duty after guarding the house of the provincial police director. The murders brought to 127 the number of officers killed in the city this year. Shortly afterward, the "Extraditables"--top traffickers wanted for trial in the United States--renewed their declaration of war on the government in an open letter to the police director.

Gunmen killed four more police officers in Medellin, three of them after the city's cocaine cartel declared an end to its campaign of bombings and assassinations, police said Saturday. Minutes before the Extraditables, as the Medellin drug bosses call themselves, sent a message by facsimile mail to the local press Friday calling for a truce, gunmen killed a police officer, according to a police statement. Three other police officers were assassinated later in the day, the statement said.

At least 25 leftist guerrillas and 21 police officers and soldiers were killed during three days of fighting in Colombia's northern province of Cordoba, Jose Amin, the governor of the region, reported. The clashes began Tuesday when rebels took over the town of Salsa, 350 miles northwest of the capital of Bogota, and ended when the guerrillas abandoned the town during a thunderstorm.

Three police officers were killed and eight others wounded in Medellin, Colombia, in what security sources said was almost certainly retaliation by the city's powerful cocaine cartel. Brance Munoz Mosquera, the No. 1 hit man for cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, died in a shootout with police early Wednesday. Later in the day bands of gunmen attacked two police cars and a bus. One of the attackers was slain and two others captured.

A powerful car bomb exploded on a highway bridge near Colombia's cocaine capital of Medellin, destroying a police truck and killing at least 16 people and wounding at least 73, police said. The bomb exploded near the town of Itagui as a truck carrying police officers was passing. Eight officers and eight civilians were killed, police reported. The officers were members of the Elite Brigade, which operates against drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas.

Carlos Guerro Rodriguez, chief of security for the city of Medellin, was assassinated by gunmen who fired into his jeep while he waited at a traffic light. And two more police officers were shot to death in that turbulent cocaine center. The killings appeared to signal a new surge in attacks on peace officers. Seven police officers, in addition to Guerro, were killed in 72 hours in or near the city.

Seventeen policemen died and four were injured in a leftist rebel attack in Colombia's Meta province Saturday, bringing to 28 the number of police, soldiers and judicial officials killed there in 24 hours. The 21 policemen were ambushed by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels while traveling in two vehicles outside the town of San Juan de Arama, authorities said. A 200-strong FARC column detonated dynamite charges and then attacked with grenades and rifle fire.

Gunmen firing from two taxis and a motorcycle assassinated a senior federal investigator and wounded his driver Sunday in Medellin, police said. The attack appeared to be a hit by drug traffickers. Luis Fernando Correa, 34, was the chief investigator for Medellin, a cocaine-trafficking center and Colombia's second-largest city.

Reacting to a wave of bloody bombings and other attacks by leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers, President Cesar Gaviria declared a national state of emergency late Sunday giving him new powers to fight the attackers. "I know that the entire country is waiting for decided action against these terrorists," Gaviria said in a television address Sunday night--his second in 24 hours.

Leftist guerrillas on Saturday killed 26 police officers guarding an oil field in southern Colombia and set off 11 bombs in the capital, causing one injury but no deaths. About 300 rebels belonging to the Simon Bolivar Coordinating Front used automatic weapons and grenades to attack 32 police officers guarding the Orito oil field in the jungle near the border with Ecuador, officials reported.

Three police officers were killed and eight others wounded in Medellin, Colombia, in what security sources said was almost certainly retaliation by the city's powerful cocaine cartel. Brance Munoz Mosquera, the No. 1 hit man for cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, died in a shootout with police early Wednesday. Later in the day bands of gunmen attacked two police cars and a bus. One of the attackers was slain and two others captured.

Gunmen killed four more police officers in Medellin, three of them after the city's cocaine cartel declared an end to its campaign of bombings and assassinations, police said Saturday. Minutes before the Extraditables, as the Medellin drug bosses call themselves, sent a message by facsimile mail to the local press Friday calling for a truce, gunmen killed a police officer, according to a police statement. Three other police officers were assassinated later in the day, the statement said.

The Colombian government sought to rally national and international support Thursday for its battle against drug lords accused of planning a terrorist bomb attack that killed as many as 61 people. "With faith, bravery and firmness let us stand up to defend the fatherland," President Virgilio Barco Vargas said in a message from Japan, where he was finishing an official visit. "We are not going to let ourselves fall under the bloody tyranny of the narco-terrorists."

The bodyguard of the mayor of Medellin and a police officer were shot dead, and two police stations were bombed in the latest outbreaks of the relentless violence in Colombia's main drug center, officials said. No one was injured in the bombings. The officer's death brought to 157 the number of police officers killed in Medellin so far this year.