Colombia Asks U.N. to Probe Church Bombing

Even as government troops struggled Monday to reach a village where 110 civilians were reported slain, President Andres Pastrana called for a U.N. commission to look into the bloodbath.

Wooden boats carrying some of the wounded--men, women and children--began arriving in Quibdo, a grimy port town upriver from the jungle village of Bojaya, where the civilians, including about 40 children, died during fighting between rebels and paramilitary gunmen.

Many were killed Thursday when a mortar round allegedly fired by rebels hit a church, where the villagers had sought shelter.

“Hopefully, the United Nations will come and see firsthand what the terrorists are doing here,” Pastrana told reporters in Bogota.

He rejected accusations that the attacks--some of the worst against civilians in Colombia’s 38-year war--could have been prevented had authorities heeded warnings from U.N. and Colombian human rights monitors.

“We are in an internal conflict and we are trying to cover all the national territory,” said Pastrana, indicating that his U.S.-backed security forces were stretched too thin.

Army Gen. Fernando Tapias, head of Colombia’s armed forces, accused the rebels of intentionally targeting the civilians in Bojaya.

Those who survived the attack on the church there described a hellish scene. Residents of the poor fishing village had agreed to meet in the concrete-walled church in case of an attack. About 600 people were inside when the explosion occurred.

“There was sound like thunder and then the mortar crashed down. People’s faces were destroyed, their bodies bloodied,” said Oscar Guzman, a teacher who was hiding in the church along with his wife and 15-year-old son, who all escaped unharmed.

Waving T-shirts and any other white cloth they could find, stunned survivors fled the church, boarded boats and crossed the river to the sister town of Vigia del Fuerte, from where Guzman was reached by telephone Monday. Some fled on foot.

“The people thought the church was a place that would be respected,” said Joaquin Palacio, a Choco State assemblyman in Quibdo who said he lost two brothers and other relatives in the attack. “I’m feeling so terribly impotent because I can’t even go and bury my dead.”