DOZENS DIE IN COLOMBIA DRUG STRUGGLE

BOGOTA, Colombia - A five-day battle over cocaine producing plantations in
the northern mountains killed up to 44 leftist guerrillas and right-wing
paramilitary fighters, a military commander said Sunday.

Troops have regained control over the battle zone in Antioquia state, said
Col. Jairo Ovalle of the army's 11th Brigade.

Ovalle said the troops had recovered the bodies of 14 paramilitary fighters
near the village of Acacia, about 245 miles northeast of the capital
Bogota. Based on radio intercepts, Ovalle estimated as many as 30
guerrillas also died in the fighting, which began on Tuesday and ended
Saturday.

Rebels typically take their dead with them or toss them in rivers, making
it difficult to arrive at precise guerrilla body counts, he added.

The two main outlaw factions squaring off in the South American country's
37-year-old war - the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, and the rightist-United Self-Defense of Colombia, or AUC - fund
themselves through profits off the drug trade.

Both sides tax peasants who grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine, and
demand payoffs from traffickers who ship the finished product to the United
States and Europe. They regularly battle for cocaine-producing areas.

Washington is playing a growing role in the intensifying Colombian
conflict. The U.S. government is providing hundreds of millions of dollars
in military aid to help the armed forces battle rebel and paramilitary
units involved in the drug trade.