Comrades, FARC kills 25 police. Fraternally Charles Tuesday, August 1, 2000 25 cops feared dead in rebel attack BOGOTA: Hundreds of communist rebels rained homemade missiles on a mountain town in western Colombia on Sunday and may have killed up to 25 policemen in an attack which marked a fresh upsurge in the country's long-running civil conflict, a police spokesman said. Some 600 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgents launched the raid before dawn on Arboleda, a town in the Andes mountains in Caldas province, at the heart of Colombia's main coffee-growing region. The rebel column used the by-now familiar tactic of showering the town with propane gas cylinders packed with explosives--notoriously inaccurate weapons which have frequently caused widespread injuries to civilians. National police chief Gen Ernesto Gilibert told a news conference that all contact was lost with the police station after dawn but declined to speculate on the death toll. Bad weather prevented helicopter-borne reinforcements from flying into the combat zone, and an army unit trying to reach the town on foot ran into a rebel ambush, Gen Gilibert said. There was no immediate word on casualties from that operation, he added. The fighting was the latest in a wave of attacks by the FARC against government security forces.--Reuters _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
