FARC cooperates with ELN

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxx>]

Reuters. 11 July 2002. Colombian mountain clashes claim at least 35
lives.

BOGOTA -- Mountain clashes in northeast and southwest Colombia have
claimed 35 lives, the army said on Thursday, with Marxist rebels,
Colombian troops and civilians added to the growing body count of the
country's 38-year guerrilla war.

The heaviest combat took place near the town of La Plata, in
southwestern Huila Province, with 17 leftist guerrillas killed in
clashes with government soldiers.

In a battle in the northeast, 14 soldiers were killed in ongoing
fighting that began on Tuesday.

Colombian jets bombed rebel positions more than 9,850 feet (3,000
meters) above sea level, some 185 miles (300 km) northeast of Colombia's
capital, Bogota, the commander of the army's first brigade, Gen. Fabio
Bedoya, told reporters.

Bedoya said his soldiers were fighting a combined contingent from the
country's two largest leftist rebel armies, the Marxist-inspired
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials
FARC, and the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Arm, or ELN.

The 17,000-member FARC and the 5,000-member ELN have increasingly joined
forces to stave off incursions by the army and far-right paramilitary
outlaws, who are funded by the drug trade and wealthy cattle-ranchers to
kill leftist rebels.

In the mountains of Huila province, south of Bogota, guerrilla fighters
attacked a police station in the small town of Maito with gas-cylinder
bombs, grenades and gunfire, laying waste to several buildings and
killing two police officers and two civilians, the army said.

It was possible that more dead and injured were buried in the rubble.


-------------------------------------------
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht



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