6 Riot Police Officers Killed in Battle With Students at S. Korean University

Six riot police officers were killed in fighting with radical students today when police raided a university in the southeastern port of Pusan to rescue five officers being held hostage, officials said.

About 20 other officers and students were injured in the fighting, 10 of them seriously. The national Yonhap news agency said the death toll could rise because seven officers were hospitalized with serious burns.

Police said about 700 officers launched a dawn raid on the library building at Dongui University to rescue the officers, who were seized Tuesday after a clash between students and riot police.

Students on the seventh floor of the school library set fire to inflammable liquid. When troopers burst in several were set on fire, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

Yonhap said the students, who fled to the roof of the building with the hostages, later released them.

Some of the officers, wrapped in flames, leaped out of windows and others choked to death on the smoke or were badly burned, the officials said.

Korean Broadcasting System, the state television network, said 88 students were arrested in the raid.

There was no immediate reaction from the South Korean government, which has issued increasingly dire warnings in recent weeks of the dangers of what it calls leftist extremism in campus and labor protests.

Last week, President Roh Tae Woo hinted he might have to take emergency powers to quell the violence.