70 Colombia Troops Reported Killed

Six hundred soldiers slogged through a thick southern jungle Thursday trying to reach the site where dozens of government troops were killed this week in an apparent surprise attack, the military’s worst defeat in more than 30 years of fighting leftist rebels.

The rebels said 70 soldiers were killed and 30 wounded during the 24-hour battle Monday and Tuesday in a jungle region that is a center of Colombia’s cocaine trade.

Eight soldiers were taken prisoner and three army helicopters were damaged, the rebels said in a statement Thursday. There was no mention of rebel casualties. The military command lost contact with its troops Monday and had no precise casualty figures because reinforcements had not yet arrived.

It was the worst in a string of military debacles that began in 1996 and have plagued President Ernesto Samper. His peace overtures have been shunned by guerrillas, who cite drug corruption in his administration while at the same time enriching themselves through “taxes” on the drug trade.

The latest setback brought stinging new criticism of Colombia’s military leadership, widely held to be inept and accused by foreign governments and international human rights groups of collaborating with paramilitary death squads that have killed hundreds of alleged guerrilla sympathizers during Samper’s tenure.

Sporadic fighting and bad weather prevented International Committee of the Red Cross workers, radioed by rebels Wednesday and asked to retrieve the dead and wounded, from even attempting to reach the jungle region 260 miles south of Bogota, the capital.