UP TO 27 DIE IN ALLEGED COLOMBIAN ARMY BOMB RAID

BOGOTA, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Colombian human rights activists said on Monday
up to 27 civilians could have been killed when an army plane bombed a
village during clashes with Marxist rebels but military chiefs denied the
report.

Gloria Gomez, head of the independent Regional Committee For Human Rights
in the northeastern province of Arauca, said the attack took place on
Sunday in the town of Santo Domingo.

"Four bombs were dropped ... We have 14 people confirmed dead," she said.
"The information we have is that 13 other bodies are still lying on the
road and it has been impossible to recover them because the fighting is
still continuing."

Gomez said about 25 people were injured and some 200 people from the
village of 300 people had fled their homes for fear of being caught in the
fighting.

Survivors said the aircraft attacked them as they ran out of their homes to
a nearby road with their hands in the air to show they were non-combatants.

"A plane flew over firing bullets and bombs. We left our homes so they
could see we were civilians but they still dropped the bombs," one unnamed
woman, who received shrapnel wounds, told the Radionet radio network.

The incident took place while government troops pursued a 200-strong column
of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a battle that was
still raging on Monday.

Military sources gave a partial toll on Sunday of 14 civilians, including
five children, and two soldiers dead.

Fighting first flared on Saturday when an army helicopter forced a light
aircraft packed with 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) of cocaine to land at the
nearby town of Tame.

The helicopter came under fire from FARC rebels, whom Colombian and U.S.
officials say have close ties with the drug trade, according to Gen. Luis
Barbosa, head of the army's 18th Brigade.

Barbosa said the army had called in helicopter gunships to provide ground
troops with air support but no military aircraft had bombed Santo Domingo.

"There was no indiscriminate bombardment ... Unfortunately the bandits, in
their rush to flee, used the civilian population as human shields," Barbosa
said late on Sunday.

Army chiefs in Bogota have called a news conference later on Monday to give
an update on the situation.

Civilians have increasingly found themselves caught in the crossfire of
Colombia's three-decade-old war that has pitted leftist guerrillas against
government security forces and ultra-right death squads.

In a recent report Washington-based Human Rights Watch accused all sides of
violating international humanitarian law and of widespread rights abuses.

"Just as Colombia's war has no set battlefields so does it lack safe haven.
In traditional wars, civilians can flee the front lines ... But Colombia's
war has no quarter," the report said.

In October, National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas bombed an oil
pipeline in northwest Colombia, killing 73 people -- one of the worst
civilian death tolls in the war, which has claimed more than 35,000 lives
in the last decade.

The latest casualties came as the FARC and the smaller ELN prepare to meet
President Andres Pastrana for the first peace talks in six years.

But rebel demands for sweeping agrarian reform, an end to unfettered free
market economic policies and wealth redistribution, coupled with their
refusal to disarm even after an eventual deal, mean the road to peace is
littered with obstacles.

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson