BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- At least seven people died in Colombia's
                  latest round of political bloodletting, including a 65-year-old widow killed in
                  a grenade attack and a young police officer found tortured to death,
                  authorities said on Tuesday.

                  The widow, identified as Aura Maria Pico, was killed when suspected leftist
                  rebels hurled two hand grenades into a storefront in Barrancabermeja,
                  Colombia's main oil town, police said.

                  They said six other people were injured in the attack, two of whom were
                  listed in critical condition in a local hospital.

                  Separately, police said gunmen of the left or right killed five men early on
                  Tuesday in Tibu, an oil production centre on Colombia's northern border
                  with Venezuela.

                  There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killings of the men, all
                  aged between 35 and 40 whose bodies were found dumped alongside a
                  rural highway.

                  But police said the crime had the hallmarks of a so-called "settling of scores"
                  between rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups battling for territorial
                  control.

                  Elsewhere, police said the tortured corpse of a 22-year-old policeman taken
                  prisoner by Marxist guerrillas in an attack on a small town last Friday was
                  discovered on Tuesday in a rural area of southwest Cauca province.

                  The lower half of the officer's body had suffered massive burn injuries that
                  were believed to be the cause of his death, judicial police officials said.

                  Colombia's long-running internal conflict has claimed the lives of 35,000
                  people, most of them civilians, over the last decade.

                  President Andres Pastrana, who took office last month, has vowed to open
                  peace talks with the country's main rebel group -- the Revolutionary Armed
                  Forces of Colombia -- by early November. The talks would mark the first
                  effort to reach a negotiated settlement of the conflict in six years.
 

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