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Friday February 18 7:37 PM ET
Colombia Political Violence Leaves 27 Dead
BOGOTA (Reuters) - At least 27 people died in the
latest outbreak of political violence across Colombia,
including 20 peasants who were shot and hacked to
death by members of a right-wing paramilitary death
squad, authorities said on Friday.

News of the killings came a day after the government,
which is engaged in year-old peace talks with the
country's leading Marxist guerrilla force, said it was
preparing to launch negotiations with Colombia's
second-largest leftist rebel group as well.

Police said the slaughter of the peasants -- all of
whom were beheaded -- came during a three-day rampage
by about 200 members of an ultra-right paramilitary
group operating in a rural area of northern Sucre
province.

The number of people killed in six separate villages
belonging to the municipality of Ovejas, which means
sheep in Spanish, was initially placed at 11 by the
police. But Alejandro de la Rosa, a municipal human
rights official, said 20 bodies had been recovered by
late Friday afternoon and the final death toll could
rise to 30.

``The bloodbath began Wednesday. All the victims are
men who were shot and decapitated by the
paramilitaries,'' De la Rosa told Reuters in a
telephone interview.

``We think at least 10 other bodies are still out
there,'' he added, explaining that the fate of some
townspeople was unknown after the orgy of violence
that finally ended early Friday.

The paramilitaries, who field an estimated 6,000
fighters across Colombia, have killed leftists and
suspected rebel sympathizers for more than a decade.
Though outlawed, human rights groups say they operate
with the complicity or tacit support of the military.

Senior army officers have been linked to peasant
massacres and other atrocities in the past, in a
three-pronged civil conflict that has killed more than
35,000 in the last decade.

Ovejas is located in Montes de Maria, a mountainous
and jungle-covered region where Carlos Castano, the
country's top paramilitary chief, has fought a
long-running battle with Cuban-inspired National
Liberation Army (ELN) for territorial control.

The killings there came as the government stepped up
recent peace overtures with the ELN, culminating with
an offer announced late on Thursday to give the group
a safe haven in northern Bolivar province to begin
talks to end their long-running war against the state.

Troop Pullout For Eln

Details of the possible land-for-peace deal with the
ELN have not been made public. But the government has
pulled all troops out of a Switzerland-sized area of
southeast Colombia since late 1998, to create a forum
for ongoing peace negotiations with the larger
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Pablo Beltran, a senior ELN commander, told reporters
on a visit to Nicaragua Friday government security
forces would also be removed from the zone the ELN is
to be granted control over in Bolivar. ``The only
military force that will be left there is that of the
guerrillas,'' Beltran said.

In addition to the killings in Ovejas, police said a
paramilitary death squad gunned down three people on
Friday in northwest Antioquia province.

Two soldiers died in a clash with members of a
paramilitary group in southwest Valle del Cauca
province, meanwhile, the same province where two
police officers died in a FARC rebel attack in the
town of Cumbarco.

Slow-moving peace talks with the FARC, which has about
17,000 fighters compared with the ELN's 5,000, are
taking place without any previous cease-fire deal.