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From: [wren 1] at [ccnet.com] (wren1)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Anti-coca campaign/rebel offensive/Colombia
Date: 1 Sep 1996 23:41:16 GMT

September 01,1996
BOGOTA,Colombia
Colombia's armed forces went on nationwide
alert Saturday after a series of rebel attacks
on government targets killed about 100 people,
the military said.  It was the bloodiest guerrilla
offensive in decades.

The rebel raids were in retaliation for a U.S.-
backed government campaign to eradicate coca plots,
said Adm.Holdan Delgado, chief of the armed forces.
Rebels stormed towns and miltary installations with
guns and dynamite.

In one assault, the single bloodiest clash in years,
hundreds of guerrillas overran a military bas near
the border with Ecuador Friday, killing at least
34 soldiers.

Authorities blamed guerrillas of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia.

In past weeks, tens of thousands of peasants have 
gathered in southern Colombia to protest government
efforts to destroy crops of coca. Security forces have
fought with the protestors, killing at least a dozen
of them.

Protesters say growing coca is the only way they can
make a living.  The guerrillas say they are acting on
behalf of the country's poor.

END THE WOD

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