As Election Nears, Rebels Press Attack

Colombian guerrillas seemingly bent on sabotaging Sunday’s congressional elections capped the bloodiest week in 35 years of civil war with strikes in the southeast Friday, and an army counteroffensive reportedly left dozens of civilians dead.

The violence came as the army began airlifting the bodies of soldiers ambushed in the dense southern jungle earlier in the week in a humiliating demonstration of rebel strength.

“They are taking advantage of the international interest in the elections to show how strong they are,” former national security advisor Alfredo Molano said of the insurgents. “They no longer just attack. They set up ambushes and take prisoners.”

Over the past year, guerrillas have become increasingly bold, attacking army bases and taking recruits prisoner. Still, the successful attack on the highly regarded army unit is a qualitative leap, Molano said. “They are trying to show that they can compete with the Colombian state politically and militarily.”

Rebels claim that 80 soldiers were killed and 43 taken prisoner in fighting Monday and Tuesday.

The army still has not released an official death count, citing the difficulty and danger of searching for bodies and survivors in the remote, guerrilla-controlled area, which is a major cocaine-producing region.

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Only eight of the 140 troops attacked by insurgents are known to be alive, and the armed forces had lost radio contact with them. Still, army officials held out hope Friday that the majority of the soldiers survived the attack.

Further fighting was reported in the region Friday. In driving out the rebels to allow searches, the army has strafed a wide area, killing 28 civilians, local authorities said.

Jose Elberto Ramirez, a city council member in Cartagena del Chairo, near the battleground, said 11 members of one family and nine from another were among those killed in air raids on farms an hour or more away from the battle site.

“I left with my family, and there were lots of bodies,” Jose Antonio Sayes, a refugee from the bombing, told a radio station.

In an action that Molano said was almost certainly coordinated with the southern guerrillas, about 100 insurgents blocked traffic on one of Colombia’s main highways early Friday. They gave televised interviews until the army fired on them.

Rebels are also suspected in a bombing near a vehicle carrying a congressional candidate Friday morning in the northern state of Arauca. It was the second attack in a year against the candidate, who strongly supports the armed forces.

Visiting the base nearest the battleground Friday, President Ernesto Samper acknowledged that the attack on government forces was “a hard blow.”

He also called on other countries to stop selling arms to the rebels and to halt the sales of illegal drugs that support the insurgents. Guerrillas in southern Colombia receive most of their income from “taxes” on cocaine production.

Molano said the attack is the clearest demonstration to date of the army’s ineffectiveness.

“This is the most important unit in the army,” he said. “They are well-paid, well-trained, well-armed professional soldiers. . . . The army is inefficient. The fact that they have been so severely beaten shows that more money does not improve anything.”

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Darling is a Times staff writer, Lawrence a special correspondent.