34 More Colombians Killed When Death Squads Attack Two Villages

Right-wing death squads killed at least 34 people in northern Colombia on Saturday, raising the toll from three days of bloodshed to more than 80, authorities said.

The worst incident occurred in a remote village in Magdalena province, where 20 people were slaughtered. Most of the victims had been attending a baptism at the local church when they were selectively dragged outside by the gunmen and shot to death, the provincial police chief said.

Fourteen other people were killed in a rural and deeply impoverished area of Bolivar province. The victims, several of them women, were pulled from their homes shortly before dawn and gunned down execution-style in the street, police spokesmen said.

They quoted witnesses as saying the 40 heavily armed men who swept through the town were all suspected members of the United Self-Defense Forces, a loosely woven alliance of paramilitary gangs.

On Saturday, government-appointed delegates met with leftist rebels to chart an agenda for peace talks to end 34 years of civil war.

Jorge Briceno, the rebels’ No. 2 commander, strongly denied that the insurgents are drug traffickers, and he invited U.S. officials to come to the country to see for themselves.

U.S. and Colombian officials say the rebels earn as much as half a billion dollars a year by protecting drug crops, cocaine laboratories and clandestine airstrips. The United States provides more than $100 million annually in anti-narcotics aid for aerial crop eradication and equipment and training for the police and military.

While not denying that some rebel fronts might make money from the drug trade, Briceno said, “The guerrillas are not drug traffickers. That is not part of our foundation.”