Wooden boats carrying some of the wounded -- men, women and children -- began
                 arriving in Quibdo, a grimy port town upriver from the jungle village of Bojaya,
                 where the civilians, including about 40 children, died during fighting between rebels
                 and paramilitary gunmen. Many were killed Thursday when a mortar round
                 allegedly fired by rebels hit a church, where the villagers had sought shelter.

                 "Hopefully, the United Nations will come and see firsthand what the terrorists are
                 doing here," Pastrana told reporters in the capital, Bogota.

                 He rejected accusations that the attacks -- some of the worst against civilians in
                 Colombia's 38-year war -- could have been prevented had authorities heeded
                 warnings from U.N. and Colombian human rights monitors.

                 "We are in an internal conflict and we are trying to cover all the national territory,"
                 said Pastrana, indicating that his U.S.-backed security forces were stretched too
                 thin.

                 Army Gen. Fernando Tapias, head of Colombia's armed forces, accused the rebels
                 of intentio nally targeting the civilians in the village of Bojaya.

                 Those who survived the attack on the church in Bojaya described a hellish scene.
                 Residents of the poor fishing village had agreed to meet in the cement-walled
                 church in case of an attack. Some 600 people were inside when the explosion
                 occurred.

                 "There was sound like thunder and then the mortar crashed down. People's faces
                 were destroyed, their bodies bloodied," said Oscar Guzman, a teacher who was
                 hiding in the church along with his wife and 15-year-old son, who all escaped
                 unharmed.

                 Waving T-shirts and any other white cloth they could find, stunned survivors fled
                 the church, boarded boats, and crossed the river to the sister town of Vigia del
                 Fuerte, from where Guzman was reached by telephone on Monday. Some fled on
                 foot through the swamps.

                 Journalists trying to reach the village Monday by boat on the muddy Atrato River
                 were turned back at a military checkpoint just outside Quibdo.

                 Two wooden boats carrying 10 wounded villagers, four of them children, reached
                 the docks of Quibdo. A Red Cross official carried ashore an infant with a splint on
                 his leg, and other wounded villagers were hoisted aboard stretchers.

                 "The people thought the church was a place that would be respected," said Joaquin
                 Palacio, a Choco State assemblyman in Quibdo who said he lost two brothers and
                 other relatives in the attack on the church. "I'm feeling so terribly impotent, because
                 I can't even go and bury my dead."

                 An official in the federal human rights ombudsman's office in Bogota -- which runs
                 a U.S.-funded "early warning system" to prevent attacks on civilians -- said letters
                 warning of impending fighting were faxed to the Interior Ministry and nine other
                 government and military offices on April 24, a week before the clashes broke out.

                 The letter noted that 300 paramilitaries had moved into the area, and that
                 massacres, clashes or selective assassinations could occur at any moment, said the
                 official.

                 Interior Minister Armando Estrada said the death toll had reached 110. He
                 acknowledged the government had received warnings, but told reporters in Bogota
                 that: "Nobody believed that civilians would be so drastically affected in the fighting
                 between paramilitaries and the FARC."

                 Troops backed by helicopter gunships were trying to get to Bojaya, located 85
                 miles north of Quibdo, but air force Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco said flooding and
                 skirmishes were frustrating the efforts.

                 Pope John Paul II sent a message of condolences to the families of the victims,
                 saying he was profoundly saddened by the guerrilla attack and condemned "these
                 new acts of terrorism."

                  Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.