Rebels Used Toxic Gas During Attack, Colombia Police Say

Colombia’s largest rebel army used gas during an attack on a village police station, killing four policemen who died slow, agonizing deaths, a police commander said Tuesday.

Biopsies were taken from the four policemen to determine what agent was used, said police Col. Francisco Henry Caicedo. He described the gas as “toxic” but acknowledged that it could have been tear gas, which can be lethal in enclosed spaces.

Results of the biopsies were not expected for several days. If poisonous gas--and not tear gas--was used, it would be the first known case in Colombia’s four-decade civil war.

Caicedo said that according to officers who survived the attack Sunday in San Adolfo, in Huila province, 230 miles south of Bogota, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia tossed bombs into their compound that sent dark gray smoke into their bunker and tunnels.

“They were suffocating. They couldn’t breathe and felt their lungs were going to explode. They were immediately blinded by the gas,” Caicedo said.

One officer died in a hospital in Pitalito, near San Adolfo; another died in the provincial capital of Neiva; a third was airlifted to a hospital in Bogota, the national capital, and died; and the fourth was kidnapped by the rebels but collapsed and died in a village near the scene of the attack, Caicedo said.

Caicedo ruled out the possibility that rebel missiles had caused toxic material in the station to accidentally leak during the attack, saying no such material was stored at the police station.

The FARC had no immediate reply to the accusations.