Colombia Army Seizes Rebel Stronghold

The Colombian army said Sunday that it has attacked and occupied the headquarters of the country’s biggest guerrilla group. Eleven soldiers and air force personnel and as many as 60 guerrillas were reportedly killed.

The headquarters of the Marxist Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces--known as the FARC--in the mountains south of Bogota had not been attacked since it was set up in 1985.

The troops attacked the camp, known as Casa Verde, as Colombians voted to elect a 70-member national assembly to rewrite the 104-year-old constitution. The FARC and other rebel groups had stepped up attacks in recent weeks, apparently to protest their exclusion from the assembly.

In a humiliating setback to Colombia’s two traditional political parties, the former rebels of another group, called the M-19, had an apparently insurmountable lead with 49% of the total vote reported. The National Elections Office said late Sunday that the M-19 had 486,599 votes, or 32% of the count.

The National Salvation Party, a Conservative Party splinter group led by former presidential candidate Alvaro Gomez, had 324,997 votes, or 21%.

The rest of the votes were spread thinly among 800 candidates.

Only about 25% of voters went to the polls, the elections office said. It was the lowest voter turnout for a national election in more than a quarter of a century.

It was also the first time in Colombia’s history that neither the Conservative Party nor the Liberal Party had dominated voting. The results were viewed as likely to underscore the possibility of social upheaval, unless the government urgently attends to the needs of the poor.

The M-19 laid down its arms nine months ago in exchange for government pardons and the right to form a political party.

Sunday’s vote will result in a constitutional assembly empowered to make major structural reforms to government. The expected changes include a revamping of Colombia’s battered court system, the addition of safeguards to curb congressional corruption and the establishment of new civil rights in this country wracked by drug violence.

“We are at the doors of the most exceptional opportunity to transform Colombia,” said President Cesar Gaviria in a nationally televised speech Saturday evening.

“We Colombians can finally devise a way to bring our country the peace which has been so elusive,” he said.

The attack on FARC headquarters at Casa Verde left seven soldiers and four air force officers dead, an army communique said. The airmen were killed when their helicopter crashed, the army said.