AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Sunday, 2 August 1998


                Eight shot dead in Colombia
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BOGOTA -- At least eight people were shot dead and four wounded Sunday 
in Colombia's main oil port in what could be another attack by the country's
far right, police said.

The attack in Barrancabermeja in northeast Colombia came two days after a
government report linked the military to a massacre of 36 people in the
same city earlier this year.

Witnesses told radio stations that a group of gunmen entered bars and
discotheques shooting indiscriminately.

Police said they were trying to find out whether the violence was an
isolated incident or part of a new wave of violence from extreme right
paramilitaries that has rocked this South American nation.

The four wounded in the attack are in hospital in Barrancabermeja, home of
Colombia's largest oil refinery and an area  of support for leftist
rebels, officials said.

Witnesses complained that police took several hours to arrive at the
scene. But a police spokesman said officers were taking precautions due
to the presence in the area of leftist urban guerrillas and paramilitary
groups.

On May 16 in the same area paramilitaries killed 11 people and abducted
another 25, who they said were later killed because of their ties to
leftist guerrillas.

Only 11 deaths could be confirmed in that incident.

On Friday, a military officer was accused of participating in the May
massacre.

Human rights activists have blamed paramilitaries for more than 30
massacres in Colombia in 1997, in which some 500 civilians died.

        Copuright 1998 Agence France-Presse