THURSDAY,MAY 9,2002
WORLD NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 11A
Colombia recovers from bloodbath
The Associated Press
QUIBDO, Colombia Through a hellish night and into the day, hundreds of families huddled on the floor of the church, praying for an end to the battle raging through their Colombian village.
Then with a sound like thunder and a shudder like an earthquake, a rebel mortar round came crashing through the roof, turning the sanctuary into a deathtrap.
"When I recovered my senses I began to look for my family," said survivor Octaviano Palacio. But the blast killed them all.
A week after one of the worst bloodbaths in Colombia's 38-year-old civil war, government and Roman Catholic authorities were beginning to piece together accounts of the battle between leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries that engulfed the village of Bojaya and led to the church attack that killed as many
as 117 villagers. More than a third were children.
Underscoring its lack of control over wide swaths of this South American country, the military on Tuesday was still trying to reach Bojaya, reportedly strewn with corpses and with wounded awaiting evacuation.
In a statement read to reporters in Quib浊 Tuesday by phone, a commander of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said the mortar attack on the church was accidental. He accused the paramilitaries of putting the civilians in danger with their presence in the village.
The sweltering, swampy region of northwest Colombia is a strategic corridor near the border with Panama that is used by the warring groups to smuggle drugs and black market arms.
The locals, most of whom are black descendants of slaves in one of the most neglected areas on the continent, have been
caught in the crossfire as the rebels and paramilitaries seek to control the corridor.
The FARC attacked Vigia del Fuerte, a town just across the Attrato River from Bojaya, in March 2000, driving out its police force after killing 21 officers. Once under rebel control, the area became a target for the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a brutal right-wing militia group that has acted with the support of elements of the Colombian military.
According to a report by the Roman Catholic diocese in Quibdo, six boatloads of paramilitary fighters moved into Bojaya and Vigia del Fuerte on April21.
Four days later the FARC began blocking shipments of food and gasoline to flush out the paramilitaries. Then, on May 1, they attacked a paramilitary boat on the river, setting off the fighting that drove the villagers of Bojaya into the church.
Rebels launch attack in Nepal
The Associated Press
KATMANDU, Nepal — Retaliating against a massive military offensive, rebels launched simultaneous attacks yesterday across Nepal, killing at least 104 soldiers and police officers and losing 14 of their own, the army said.
More than 100 soldiers and police were killed in the remote western village of Gam, where about 500 Maoist guerrillas surrounded a joint army-police base late Tuesday, a senior officer of the Royal Nepalese Army told The Associated Press.
The death toll could not be independently confirmed, because journalists and human rights groups have not been allowed into the areas of fighting
Gam is a stronghold of Maoist insurgents who have been fighting to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy since 1996.
Army helicopters ferried soldiers to Gam after dawn yesterday to try to help the trapped forces. The helicopters were not able to land, however, due to bad weather, the officer said.
While the fighting raged Tuesday night, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and President Bush met in Washington to discuss U.S. aid for Nepal. The Bush administration recently asked Congress for $20 million in noncombat assistance for Nepal.
"Nepal is fighting a Maoist rebellion, and Nepal is an example, again, of a democracy, and the United States is committed to helping Nepal," White House representative Ari Fleischer said Tuesday.
The Maoist attacks were a
response to an air and land assault on a suspected guerrilla training camp in the Rolpa district, where Gam is located, 180 miles west of Katmandu. It was the largest assault by security forces in six years of fighting.
Also yesterday, the army said it had regained control of a police camp seized by the guerrillas in the town of Chainpur, about 240 miles east of Katmandu.
Four police officers were killed there, and soldiers recovered 14 rebel bodies, it said.
The army said yesterday that more than 410 rebels had been killed since Thursday, though other government officials have offered higher numbers. No civilians deaths have been reported, but the death toll could not be confirmed.
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