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Colombia Forces Tighten Grip on Rebel Town (2 reports in 1)

Colombia Forces Tighten Grip on Rebel Town

By KIM HOUSEGO, Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia - Government troops consolidated their grip Friday on a mountain town retaken from leftist rebels and the town's Indian residents slowly began to return despite fears of more violence.

Helmeted troops warily patrolled the streets of Tacueyo, 190 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota, two days after a military convoy of armored vehicles drove into the town, forcing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebels into the surrounding mountains.

"Tacueyo is calm today and some residents are starting to return, but they are scared," said Jazmin Hascue, the deputy mayor of nearby Toribio.

The rebels had been using Tacueyo as a command center in an offensive they launched across a 14-mile front on April 14. The rebel attacks have posed the biggest challenge to President Alvaro Uribe's attempts to stamp out the 40-year-old insurgency since he was elected three years ago.

The taking of Tacueyo came at a cost. On Thursday, a rebel sniper shot and killed a soldier. The rebels also fired a mortar round into the town, destroying a home and wounding five people, including two children.

"We are fulfilling our constitutional duty to protect the indigenous community," Col. Juan Vicente Trujillo, the army commander in Tacueyo, told local television.

In a separate attack, rebels set fire to a bus and a taxi at a road block set up on a highway in neighboring Narino state on Friday. When a police convoy arrived, the guerrillas opened fire with assault rifles and homemade mortars, killing an officer and two civilians, said Narino Deputy Governor Fabio Trujillo. Another six officers were wounded.

Gunmen shot dead a government prosecutor and a police officer traveling in a car in center of La Hormiga, also in southwest Colombia. There was no immediate indication who was behind the attack.

Elsewhere, police captured a leader of Colombia's smaller leftist rebel group who allegedly carried out numerous attacks and kidnappings on a highway linking the Andean nation's two biggest cities, authorities said Friday.

Jose Luis Mejia, the deputy commander of one of the most active units of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, was arrested Thursday in the city of Manizales, some 120 miles west of the capital in Colombia's coffee-growing region, the National Police said in a statement.

Mejia, a 20-year rebel veteran, is suspected of carrying out attacks on the main road linking Bogota and Medellin, police said.

It was the second blow the government has dealt the ELN this week.

On Wednesday, the military nabbed Jose del Carmen Borda, an alleged ELN leader responsible for garnering international support for the guerrillas, in Medellin.

The Cuban-inspired ELN is believed to be reeling under a two-year-old government offensive, and officials say the group has suffered mass desertions. The ELN, along with the larger FARC, have been battling to topple the government and establish a Marxist-style state since 1964.

By Lionheart on Apr 30, 2005, 14:34 in Politics & the war.