COLOMBIAN ARMY ACCUSED IN MASSACRE

Mayor says soldiers did nothing to stop 48 from being slain

BOGOTA -- Colombian soldiers have done nothing to stop-and may have
aided-paramilitary gunmen who descended on the southern city of Puerto Asis
two weeks ago and methodically killed at least 48 civilians who were
thought to be guerrilla sympathizers, the city's mayor charged this week.

Mayor Nestor Hernandez said Thursday that he warned army commanders posted
in a garrison outside the town of impending bloodshed when the gunmen moved
into the region January 30.

But operating in groups of eight to 10 and often wearing ski masks, the
death squads have continued gunning down people after ~lucking them from
their homes '-om cars and buses, he said.

According to Hernandez, 38 people have been killed in Puerto Asis, 335
miles south of Bogota, while at least 10 others have been slain in outlying
areas.

Hernandez also told reporters that a witness reported that some of the
killers were flown into the area on military helicopters.

Army commander Mario Hugo Galan angrily denied the mayor's account, calling
it "totally absurd."

The spate of killings appears to be part of a campaign by the death squads
to drive leftist rebels from several southern states.

The anti-government guerrillas dominate the region's lucrative drug trade,
earning huge profits guarding crops of coca for top drug bosses. Besides
trying to end the political threat posed by rebels, the paramilitary groups
could also be seeking to wrest control of the cocaine trade, as they have
done in other regions recently.

Hernandez traveled to Bogota last week to ask government officials to
provide protection for the residents of Puerto Asis, a city of

65,000 people with only a 17-man police force. "Unfortunately, they have
done nothing," he said.

Interior Minister Alfonso Lopez admitted on the Radionet network that
"there has been a large number of murders and deaths (in Puerto Asis) ...
that is very disturbing for the government."

Last year, paramilitary leader Carlos Castano announced that his units
would push into Putumayo, where Puerto Asis is located, and other southern
states.

But the killings in and around Puerto Asis illustrate a change in tactics
of the landowner-backed death squads, which sprang up in the 1980s to
combat leftist rebels that kidnapped and extorted money from wealthy
ranchers.

They are selective killings, here and there," said Jorge Rojas, director of
the Colombian human rights group, Codhes. "They aren't going to massacre 30
or 40 people all at once because it generates too much attention and
pressure from local and international (human rights) agencies."

For years, paramilitary un made headlines for gruesome massacres that human
rights groups have long said were condoned the Colombian military.

Castano's men, who operate from a stronghold in northern Colombia, made
their first foray into the south in July, when ti entered the town of
Mapiripan, 175 miles southeast of Bogota, and tortured and killed 30
alleged guerrilla sympathizers over five days.

In October, paramilitary gunmen killed six people in Miraflores, 115 miles
south of Mapiripan.

In both cases, military commanders were aware of the killing sprees but
failed to stop them, Colombian prosecutors and human rights investigators
say.

Paramilitary forces had never before ventured into Putumayo remote jungle
region on the border with Ecuador. In much of lawless state, leftist
rebels: more prevalent than the army, raising the prospect of a bloody turf
battle.