13 Slain in Latest Colombian Violence

Ultra-right gunmen massacred at least six peasants and abducted six others in a raid on a farming community in war-torn northwest Colombia, officials said Tuesday.

The killings, which took place Monday near the village of Guadalupe in Antioquia province, followed a mass slaying in northeastern Colombia earlier in the day.

At least seven people were slain before dawn in Santander province by unidentified gunmen in a working-class neighborhood of Barrancabermeja, the main oil-refining town.

A municipal human rights official blamed the Guadalupe attack on one of the burgeoning right-wing death squads or paramilitary gangs that routinely target suspected Marxist guerrilla sympathizers.

Colombia’s long-running civil conflict among guerrillas, paramilitary gangs and the military has claimed at least 35,000 victims, many of them civilians, in the past 10 years.

The latest killings came as the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country’s oldest and largest insurgent movement, planned to restart slow-moving peace talks.

A date for the relaunch of negotiations, stalled since mid-July, is scheduled to be announced this week.

Earlier this month, the FARC issued a communique warning that government backing for illegal death squads, coupled with a surge in U.S. military aid, could sink the peace process and plunge Colombia into all-out civil war.

The human rights group Amnesty International also has widely criticized the Colombian military for covertly backing the paramilitary gangs in their “dirty war” against leftists.

The organization issued a statement Tuesday urging the United States not to increase its aid to Colombia, which is planned to total about $280 million this year.

“Congress and the Clinton administration must realize that aid to the Colombian army is aid to the paramilitary groups,” Amnesty said. “Until the collaboration between the Colombian army and paramilitary groups is broken, the United States will once again find itself supporting death squads.”