Nine are killed in Medellín firefight

  BY ANDREW SELSKY
  Associated Press

  MEDELLIN, Colombia - More than 1,000 police and soldiers stormed a poor neighborhood Wednesday, clashing with rebels. Nine people, including a 16-year-old boy, were killed in the firefight, authorities said.

  The security forces were trying to oust leftist rebels of the Armed Command of the People from the Comuna 13 neighborhood, police said.

  The rebel group is allied with the National Liberation Army.

  Four soldiers, one police officer, three rebels and the 16-year-old boy died in the fighting, according to Medellín's emergency director, Rafael Rincón.

  Another 20 were wounded, among them 14 civilians, he said. Rincón was worried that there were more casualties in the neighborhood.

  ''We are very concerned,'' said Rincón, as he stood at the edge of the neighborhood amid tents that had been erected and filled with stretchers for more possible
  wounded.

  Six ambulances waited nearby.

  `WEAPONS OF WAR'

  ''Both sides are using weapons of war,'' he said, expressing concern that the army was using helicopter gunships. Rebel snipers were also reportedly lurking on rooftops.

  Some 30 residents, most of them children, fled in the early afternoon, holding a white sheet up so security forces would not fire on them as they crossed between the warring sides.

  DANGEROUS TIMES

  But despite the danger, brightly-colored buses headed up into the neighborhood, which lies on a hill overlooking the city. Half a dozen police searched the passengers.

  ''It falls to us to live in these dangerous times,'' said Alvaro Quiceno, a salesman, as he got back into his seat on the bus. Asked why he was returning in the middle of the fighting, he said ``where else do I go?''

  He said his family lived there.

  Among those confirmed dead was the suspected commander of the rebel group, known by his alias ''Mazo,'' Army Gen. Mario Montoya said.

  National police wearing bullet proof vests and carrying assault rifles searched everyone going into and out of the area.

  Reporters were not being allowed to enter the neighborhood, where 130,000 of Medellín's 2.5 million residents live.

  PRESIDENTIAL ORDERS

  Medellín mayor Luis Pérez said security forces had received orders from President Alvaro Uribe to continue the operation until the neighborhood was under control.

  ''The order that the president has given is that no neighborhood in the city of Medellín can be in the hands of anyone besides the citizens and government security
  forces,'' Pérez said.

  For the past several months, rebels and illegal right-wing militias have been fighting for control of Comuna 13 and several other outlying neighborhoods in Medellín,
  about 155 miles northwest of Bogotá.

  Government forces have periodically entered the fray and several civilians have died in the crossfire.

  Urban combat marks a new phase in Colombia's long war, which has generally been fought in the countryside.

  Some 3,500 people, most of them civilians, die every year in Colombia's 38-year civil war.