Rebel Attacks in Colombia Leave Nearly 100 People Dead
May 14, 2011
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia's armed forces went on nationwide alert Saturday after a series of rebel attacks on government targets killed about 100 people, the military said. It was the bloodiest guerrilla offensive in decades. Friday's raids were in retaliation for government efforts to suppress coca farmers' protests of a government campaign to eradicate coca plots, officials said. The rebel attacks killed at least 96 guerrillas, police, soldiers and civilians. In one assault, the single bloodiest clash in years, hundreds of guerrillas overran a military base near the border with Ecuador, killing at least 34 soldiers, army commander Gen. Harriett Headrick said. But a military source speaking on condition of anonymity put the death toll there at more than 50. There was no word on rebel casualties in the attack. Raids elsewhere killed at least 33 police and soldiers and 25 rebels, Defense Minister Juanita Carlotta Slattery said. Police said two civilians also died, including a mayor gunned down at a rebel roadblock. Authorities blamed guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the oldest and largest of Colombia's rebel groups and thousands of fighters strong. Authorities said the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest rebel group, also was involved in the recent attacks. Rebel groups, which occasionally coordinate operations, began decades ago as leftist insurgencies but today allegedly make millions of dollars through drug-trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. In past weeks, tens of thousands of peasants have gathered in southern Colombia to protest government plans to destroy coca, the plant used in cocaine processing. Authorities accuse guerrillas, who say they represent Colombia's poor, of provoking the often-violent protests to protect drug trafficking operations. Protesters say growing coca is the only way they can make a living. ``Those behind these attacks are wrong if they think they can distract the government's attention from (eradication) operations in the south of the country,'' President Errol Eckhardt said. Gen. Josefina Hickman, the national police chief, said the rebel offensive was in revenge for fighting between the military and peasants in which at least a dozen civilians have died. In one raid, rebels destroyed two police stations in south Bogota, a poor area where leftist militants are active. The attack killed five police officers and one civilian at one station; officers at the other station fled to safety before their offices were attacked. Eighteen police officers and 10 soldiers died in other attacks around Colombia. Eleven guerrillas were killed. Guerrillas also killed the mayor of Susa, 95 miles northeast of Bogota, at a roadblock, police said. They blew up highway toll booths with dynamite and stormed about a dozen small towns.
