Death squads kill at least 29 Colombians!

BOGOTA -- Right-wing gunmen killed at least 29 people over the weekend, most of them in an area where paramilitary violence has sparked an exodus of terrified Colombians into neighbouring Venezuela, authorities said on Sunday.

The worst bloodletting occurred on Saturday night in La Gabarra, a small town nestled into the jungle along Colombia's northeast border with Venezuela, according to a statement issued by army headquarters in the capital.

After a brief skirmish with soldiers manning an army base on the outskirts of La Gabarra, paramilitary gang members marched into the town's centre and shot and killed 19 men and women, the statement said.

It said eight other residents, including a 9-year-old, were injured in the attack, which was thought to be the bloodiest since paramilitaries launched an offensive in May against Marxist rebels and their suspected sympathisers in La Gabarra and the nearby oil town of Tibu.

More than 4,000 peasants from the region have sought refuge in Venezuela since the offensive began, but most have been returned to Colombia, according to local and international human rights groups.

Monsignor Jose de Jesus Quintero, Tibu's Roman Catholic bishop, was kidnapped on Aug. 15, underscoring the seemingly uncontrolled level of violence in the border region.

The bishop had condemned the recent wave of paramilitary killings and death threats in Tibu and La Gabarra. Authorities initially blamed the abduction on rebels, but there has been no claim of responsibility for the crime.

More than 1 million people have fled their homes during the past decade to escape Colombia's long-running civil conflict, which pits leftist guerrillas against the army and ultra-right-wing death squads.

The recent exodus into Venezuela is thought to mark the first time refugees from Colombia's endemic violence have moved across its borders on such a large scale.

In other violence blamed on paramilitaries, police and military spokesmen said 10 people died in two separate attacks late on Saturday in northern Cesar province and Huila in Colombia's southeast.