Bloodshed shows no signs of letting up

  BY FRANCES ROBLES

  BOGOTA - The week Colombian President Alvaro Uribe took office started out badly.

  Just after dawn Aug. 5, fierce combat between rebels and paramilitaries battling over fertile cocaine territory in Córdoba killed so many peasants and rebels that
  authorities never quite figured out how many died. Maybe 15, the military said. Perhaps 27, or even 60.

  Inauguration day, Aug. 7, was worse. Uribe had just stepped into the nation's capitol building and was moments from taking the oath of office when mortars started
  soaring. Aimed toward him, they landed instead on little girls, drug addicts, the terribly unlucky and desperately poor, marking what nearly everyone here believes to be the start of a meaner and dirtier war that shows no signs of letting up.

  In a single day, at least 22 innocent people were killed by guerrilla warfare. In a week, 50 civilians and six police officers were killed. That doesn't include the 40 or so rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- or FARC -- and enemy United Self Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitaries who died planting bombs and shooting guns: The Colombian government doesn't keep count of them.

  If Aug. 7 and the week that followed are indicators, Colombia's new president and its 40 million people are in for more violence. A nation at war for nearly 40 years with the leftist insurgency FARC -- and already home to 3,500 related killings a year -- is bracing for the worst.

  ''Civilians pay a high price for this conflict,'' said Georges Comninos, chief of the International Red Cross Committee's delegation here. ``The latest indicators don't
  show a calmer period ahead.''

  TENSE DAY

  Inauguration day was tense in Bogotá.

  The police summoned tens of thousands of officers to the streets, and cordoned off 30 city blocks around the capitol building. The ceremony, traditionally held outdoors, was moved indoors, and even the media was kept a mile away.

  That morning proved that the security was needed: Mortars flew at a military installation in northern Bogotá, injuring six and killing a 42-year-old man driving by in his car.

  Later that afternoon, as Blanca Urquijo's eyes were fixed on the inauguration's live television broadcast, a bomb crashed through her roof, blowing it, her pregnant
  daughter-in-law and three granddaughters to pieces.

  The quiet Camila, 6, inquisitive Julie Katerine, 5, and baby Angelica, 1 ½, were playing on the top floor of their town house in a rough neighborhood just blocks from the presidential palace. Their broken bodies lay strewn throughout the top floor, beside the walls where the little girls had painted the letters of the alphabet.

  ''If this is what happened the very day he took office, what can we expect for the future?'' Urquijo wonders.

  The homemaker places blame squarely on the FARC, which started waging war decades ago to overthrow an oligarchy and protect the poor.

  ''They say they are defenders of the people,'' Urquijo said. ``I don't know what they're defending.''

  Although the mortar attack has been widely attributed to the group, the FARC has never officially taken responsibility for it. Police later found mortar launching pads at a middle-class home rented months earlier. From there, officials say rebels fired homemade mortars that could fly up to a mile. Trouble is, they often missed.

  That day, another wayward missile destined for the presidential palace landed in Cartucho, a virtual no man's land where strung-out addicts and the homeless share tin shacks. The spot is notoriously dangerous: even the police don't go there.

  ''We're a block from the presidential palace, a block from the army, a block from the judicial police,'' community leader Luis Sierra said. ``And the bomb falls here.''

  A mortar sliced right through a tin roof, landing in a spot where dozens of homeless were enjoying a mid-afternoon snooze. Among the dead were people with names such as The Rabbit, The Japanese, Crazy Castañeda, The Costeño. One woman, La John, died too. In all, there were 18 victims whose closest friends didn't know their  full names.
  ''Now the people are afraid,'' resident César Soler said. ``They want to be able to pick through a little bag of garbage without having to worry that there's a bomb in it.''

  URIBE BLAMED

  Unlike most Colombians, survivors of the Cartucho attack blame the latest upsurge of violence on Uribe, a man they say has taken a long-standing war and made it
  personal.

  Uribe, 50, campaigned for the presidency on the vow to bring a firm hand against rebels. Colombians had grown disgruntled with then-President Andrés Pastrana, whose quixotic quest for peace meant he frequently gave more concessions than he got back.

  Wanting action, Colombians elected Uribe, whose own father was killed in an alleged FARC kidnapping attempt. Uribe has promised to double the military and increase defense spending. Dialogue, he says, is out of the question until rebels lay down their arms.

  ''Who dies in all this? The good people. The bad people live,'' Soler said.

  As scores were killed naonwide during his first week on the job, Uribe got right to work. His first action was to roll out a plan enlisting thousands of civilian volunteer informants. Five days into his tenure, he declared a nationwide state of emergency, using it to impose an emergency tax that will fund another 40,000 soldiers.

  Experts are not convinced the latest wave of violence is worse than usual. Comninos, of the Red Cross, said human rights workers on the field noticed increased
  tensions and killings as far back as January.

  Doing the math in his head, Ricardo Esquivia, a peace activist with the church group JustaPaz, figures there are 67 war-related deaths every week in Colombia --
  regardless of who is in office. Uribe's first week, about 100 people died.

  ''It may not be so normal, but not so out of the ordinary either,'' Esquivia said. ``This has been a war against civilians; it's always them who fall. The death toll is getting higher and will keep getting higher until the government decides to do something about it.''

  Statistics prove his point.

  According to the Colombian Judicial Police, 97 police officers have been killed so far this year; 87 died all of last year. In 2001, 644 civilians were killed. So far this year,
  585.

  According to a government report, 7,500 acts of terrorism have been reported in 2002, plus 4,129 kidnappings.

  Inauguration day alone, the military reported three bombings in Arauca and Boyacá that shut down the country's second-most important oil pipeline.

  Five electricity pylons in Casanare province were blown up too, leaving 250,000 people without electricity.

  In Casanare, the army reported killing five members of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, an umbrella paramilitary group that fights the rebels. A state oil
  refinery in Barrancabermeja was hit that day, and 12 rebels died while allegedly trying to bomb the bridge over the Aiari River between the villages of Cubarral and El Dorado.

  ''How is all this not going to make you mad?'' said Italo Ranufo, a one-legged vagrant whose right arm and eye were damaged the day of the Aug. 7 attacks on the
  presidential palace. ``But I don't have fear, because if it came to it, I would die to defend Colombia. But it would have to be a clean fight.

  ``This is a dirty fight.''