Fighting Claims 9 Lives in Colombia

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- At least nine people were killed, including two children, when gun battles erupted Tuesday between government troops and Marxist rebels on the streets of Colombia’s third-largest city, authorities said.

The hours-long daylight clashes sent dozens of screaming residents, many waving white flags, running for cover as hundreds of heavily armed soldiers and police backed by armored vehicles chased rebels in a crowded hillside slum in Medellin.

Colombia’s drug-fueled war claims 3,500 lives a year, but the fighting rarely enters major cities as it did Tuesday, five days before presidential elections in which the front-runner is a Medellin native and anti-rebel hard-liner.

In a stinging report Tuesday about another deadly clash, the United Nations accused Colombia’s government and military of failing to prevent clashes between leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary gunmen that killed more than 100 people May 2 in Bellavista.

The Medellin fighting, which broke out after a dawn government sweep to root out rebels, was one of the worst urban clashes in years in Colombia’s nearly 40-year war.

At least 37 people--including troops, police, civilians and guerrilla members--were wounded, said Alejandro Usuga, Medellin’s civil defense chief.

It was not immediately clear whether government troops were among the dead.

Under Operation Marshall, about 900 soldiers and police with assault rifles and bulletproof vests entered the San Javier slum and other working-class areas in Medellin early Tuesday.

By noon, the streets had become a battleground in which panicked residents, including entire families, were caught in the cross-fire. Security forces crouched in narrow alleys and fired assault rifles at rooftops and apartment buildings. The army said the raid was meant to root out guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and other rebel groups. The military said that 15 suspected rebels were arrested.