BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- At least 25 people died in the latest
                  round of political violence across Colombia, including six people killed by
                  soldiers in a bloody shootout on a discotheque dance floor, authorities said
                  on Monday.

                  The violence, involving gunmen of the left and right as well as security forces,
                  came over the weekend after Friday's celebration of "Love and Friendship
                  Day" -- the national equivalent of Valentine's Day.

                  One incident in northwest Antioquia province involved a so- called "human
                  bomb," police and military spokesmen said.

                  They said Marxist rebels had rigged a corpse with an explosive device that
                  went off when the body was moved early on Sunday, killing one man and
                  seriously injuring two others including a Roman Catholic priest.

                  Other deaths that added to the weekend toll of 25 included those of three
                  women shot on Sunday night while attempting to speed past a rebel
                  roadblock outside Medellin, the Antioquia capital, police said.

                  They said four people, suspected rebel sympathisers, were killed by a
                  right-wing paramilitary group in southern Caqueta province, and a
                  small-town mayor was gunned down by rebels in northern Santander
                  province.

                  The worst single incident of violence occurred at dawn on Sunday at a
                  discotheque in southwest Narino province where seven people were killed in
                  a shootout between government troops and alleged members of the
                  Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's main
                  guerrilla army.

                  The military said one soldier died in the shootout and insisted that the other
                  six dead were well-known members of the FARC, who opened fire on a
                  small group of soldiers when they arrived at the discotheque to carry out a
                  routine inspection.

                  But townspeople in El Rosario, where the shootout occurred, including a
                  parish priest, said the victims included a local teacher and a 17-year-old
                  student, on whom the soldiers allegedly planted weapons after they were
                  killed.

                  Twelve people were injured in the shooting and a report in Bogota's El
                  Espectador newspaper said the soldiers burst into the disco spraying
                  automatic weapons fire.

                  Spokesmen for the chief prosecutor's office in Bogota said the incident was
                  under investigation.
 

                  Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.