38 Children Among Victims in Colombia

Officials said Saturday that 38 children were among as many as 98 civilians killed during fighting between rebels and rival paramilitaries in an isolated corner of northwestern Colombia.

Most of the civilians were killed when homemade mortars slammed into a church in the village of Bojaya, Juan Gonzalo Lopez, health secretary for Antioquia state, said late Saturday. The village is 235 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota, and borders Antioquia state.

Authorities blamed the attack on the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

It was not immediately clear if rebels were aiming at the church. They use cooking gas canisters packed with explosives as mortar rounds, which are not accurate.

The battles began Wednesday in Choco state when combatants squared off for control of lucrative drug-producing territory, said Gen. Leonel Gomez, commander of the army’s 1st Division.

Rescuers evacuated more than a dozen people who were wounded. Dozens of other people caught in the cross-fire remained stranded. Authorities said some of them were missing limbs, and rescuers were not expected to reach them until today at the earliest.

Sixty-eight bodies, about 20 of which haven’t been identified, were brought to the nearby village of Vigia del Fuerte in Antioquia, Lopez said. One of the victims was a 1-year-old baby.

Witnesses told rescue workers that about 30 bodies were still scattered in the area, Lopez said.

Colombia’s civil war pits the FARC and a smaller rebel group against the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and government forces. About 3,500 people, most of them civilians, are killed in fighting each year.