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Colombia army, rebels clash in city
( 2002-10-18 16:00 ) (7 )

Colombian police reacts during a raid searching urban rebels of the FARC in Medellin, October 17, 2002. The offensive left at least 10 people dead and 18 wounded, the latest casualties in the country's 38-year-old war. FARC and ELN rebels are waging a bloody battle against anti-guerrilla militias in Medellin's slums, where thousands of peasants fleeing violence have settled.[Reuters]

Heavily armed federal troops and police encircled a neighborhood in the country's second-biggest city Thursday in an attempt to oust leftist rebels, who fought back with gunfire and booby traps as residents fled the fighting.

Soldiers, police and hooded informants searched homes, shops and bars for suspected rebels in an attempt to end the most violent outbreak of urban warfare in Colombia in almost two decades. The fighting poses a major challenge to President Alvaro Uribe's campaign to bring order to his strife-torn country.

At least 20 suspects — mostly young men — were arrested after being identified by the anonymous informants.

With gunfire echoing in the background, residents rushed their wounded to a makeshift medical station on the edge of the neighborhood. A bloodied preschooler cried as paramedics attended her wounds and her mother sobbed nearby. A taxi brought a middle-aged man with an abdomen wound.

A car bomb packed with 90 pounds of explosives blew up in downtown Medellin before dawn Thursday, shattering windows in office buildings and shops. One of the men who allegedly planted the bomb was shot to death by police minutes later. Police deactivated a bomb left near a school in Comuna 13.

As gunfire broke out Thursday afternoon, police sealed off the sprawling, hillside district where Medellin Police Chief Leonardo Gallego said more than 100 rebels were still holed up.

Lizbeth Saldarriaga, fleeing the district with a bag of clothing in hand and her two sons in tow, said she had shoved mattresses against walls and windows Wednesday and had lain on the floor with her children during the fighting.

"Peace? There will be very little of that," Saldarriaga said as she walked past troops and armored personnel carriers.

"We are now refugees," she said.

Local media reports estimated as many 25 people had died in several days of fighting, though Oscar Castellanos, head of investigations for Medellin, said only 10 bodies had been recovered. It was unknown how many of the bodies were rebels or civilians.

Rebels connected to the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest guerrilla force, put up fierce resistance Wednesday as police and federal troops used helicopter gunships and moved to retake the district.

On Thursday, rebels set booby traps and a mined bridge as soldiers with assault rifles, grenade launchers and armored personnel carriers moved in.

The commander of an elite anti-kidnapping unit said rebels were moving from house to house ahead of the security forces. At least two people kidnapped by rebels had been rescued.

Uribe, a former mayor of Medellin who was elected president in May on a law-and-order campaign, returned to his hometown Thursday to check the progress of the assault but did not speak to the press. After a meeting with local leaders and security officials, Defense Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez said authorities had decided to impose a curfew in the neighborhood.

Luis Guillermo Pardo, a former peace adviser for the Medellin city government, said Uribe was wrong to think peace could return to the city only with the military assault.

"What we need in addition to the military is social investment. We need a dialogue with community leaders, even with the armed outlaws," Pardo said.

Both right-wing and left-wing militias have been increasing in numbers in Comuna 13 and other poorer districts of Medellin for years and skirmishes have broken periodically among the groups.

This week's surge in violence recalled the 1980s and the early 1990s when Medellin was wracked by a terrorist campaign waged by Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug cartel. In the last decade, Medellin has flowered as a cultural and business center, with museums opening and the city's textile industry booming.

For the rest of Medellin, residents — largely accustomed to the violence — appeared to go about their business Thursday even as police and troops rumbled through city streets.

As workers swept away broken glass from the car bomb, a priest prayed during morning Mass inside a towering red-brick cathedral a block away.

"We ask that obstacles to reconciliation be overcome," Monsignor Luis Fernando Perez said in the hushed, cool church. "We ask for peace."