Suspected members of a right-wing death squad yesterday shot eight people dead in the northern Colombian cattle-rearing town of Valledupar.
A group of about 40 men in camouflage gear and carrying assault rifles drove up to a house on the outskirts of Valledupar, about 400 miles north of the capital, Bogota.
The men, suspected of being right-wing paramilitaries, killed three men, including one who was only 17. Pausing to throw a grenade into a nearby house, they then drove to another neighborhood where they killed four men and one woman.
Right-wing paramilitaries have been responsible for many of the 35,000 civilian deaths in the past 10 years of Colombia's four-decade long conflict.
The latest blood-letting came as the government of President Andres Pastrana is close to beginning formal peace negotiations with the ELN but is struggling to keep talks going with the country's largest leftist rebel movement - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The United States is providing the country with almost 1 billion in mainly military aid purportedly to fund a helicopter-born offensive against drug plantations in southern Colombia.
Major human rights groups on Friday said that U.S. President Bill Clinton should block the small remaining part of the aid package for Colombia and accused the country's armed forces of failing to sever ties with the paramilitaries.
Pastrana's government says that it sees the paramilitaries as just as much of a problem as the leftist rebels.
The FARC walked out of peace talks in November calling for the government to do more against the paramilitaries. Pastrana must decide by the end of January whether to allow the FARC to continue using a demilitarized zone in southern Colombia, which critics say has been utilized as a base for recruitment and for keeping hostages for ransom.
REUTERS