Troops Kill 33 Drug Runners, Venezuela Says

The Defense Ministry said Tuesday that 33 drug traffickers and 15 national guardsmen were killed in a predawn attack on the sleeping troops’ camp.

A force of about 100 drug traffickers using grenades and mortars attacked the camp near the Colombian border with grenades, rockets and mortars at 4:25 a.m., Defense Minister Jose Rafael Cardozo Grimaldi reported after inspecting the battle zone. He said 10 guardsmen were wounded.

The ministry said that the attack came while the unit, charged with patrolling the mountainous border region, was resting on the banks of the Agdodabu River. The bivouac was nine miles from the border and about 435 miles from Caracas.

According to the army sources, the 52-man guard unit had been sent to the area to destroy 198 acres of marijuana and 123 acres of coca discovered in the area two weeks ago. They said 20 men were sleeping in a shack that had been used to process coca leaves into cocaine paste, and the other 32 were in the surrounding fields.

No Assailants’ Bodies

“The first group (in the shack) was the target of the attackers,” the army sources said, adding that the larger group of guardsmen went to the aid of their besieged comrades.

Reporters who visited the scene said they saw the bodies of several guardsmen but no bodies of the assailants.

The army sources said that the attackers carried away the bodies of their slain companions.

Bad weather hindered efforts to pursue the attackers, according to those sources.

The Sierra de Perija, the border region where the attack took place, is a prime base for drug runners, both Colombian and Venezuelan. The narcotics traffickers sometimes work together with Colombian guerrillas.

The 1,240-mile-long border between Venezuela and Colombia has proved impossible to patrol effectively, despite an agreement between the two countries to cooperate in search-and-destroy units against guerrillas and narcotics traffickers.