At least 12 killed in Colombia political violence

CNN 26 September 1998 At least 12 killed in Colombia political violence

                  BOGOTA, Sept 25 (Reuters) - At least 12 people were killed in the latest
                  political violence across Colombia, eight in a rebel attack on a town in the
                  country's rugged northwest mountains, authorities said on Friday.

                  Hundreds of Marxist-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
                  (FARC) guerrillas raided Dabeiba overnight, killing two policemen, four
                  civilians, the head of the local jail and one of his guards, police and municipal
                  officials said.

Police said the rebels also abducted at least seven people they claimed had
links to right-wing paramilitary groups.

                  The insurgents ransacked local shops and blew up three banks after
                  emptying their vaults during the attack that began at dusk on Thursday and
                  ended at dawn on Friday.

                  Rebels destroyed Dabeiba's jail with rockets and dynamite after freeing the
                  19 prisoners, according to Jairo Vargas, the municipal government secretary
                  in Dabeiba.

                  The police headquarters in the town of 25,000 nestled in the Cordillera
                  Occidental mountains of northwest Antioquia province, was partially
                  destroyed also. Twenty-five police officers holed up inside the building
                  fought back. Ten of them were injured.

                  The 15,000-strong FARC, Colombia's largest and oldest rebel group, has
                  agreed to hold peace talks with the government of President Andres
                  Pastrana, who took office just last month. But it has not offered a ceasefire,
                  or proposed to lay down its weapons as part of any peace process.

                  In other political bloodletting, authorities said members of a right-wing death
                  squad killed four people at dawn on Friday in the small town of Lejanias in
                  eastern Meta province.

                  The killers spray-painted graffiti on walls of the town alluding to the Peasant
                  Self-Defence Force of Cordoba and Uraba, a reference to Colombia's
                  largest and most dreaded paramilitary force, Lejanias Mayor Henry Beltran
                  said.