Thirty-nine children no older than 15 were among at least 98 people killed around two Colombian villages caught in a battle between far-right militias and leftist rebels who bombarded a packed church on Thursday, a provincial health service said last night.
Antioquia province health workers, the first officials to reach the remote northern Colombian jungle village of Vigia del Fuerte since the battle began earlier this week, named and provided ages of 50 of the dead, including a baby and many small children, a provincial government news release said.
Most of the 3,500 people killed in an average year in Colombia's 38-year-old conflict are civilians, but the fighting around Vigia del Fuerte and across a jungle river in Bojaya, Choco province, stands out in a savage struggle as one of the bloodiest incidents involving noncombatants for years.
The army, fearing ambushes, has still not come to the rescue of the impoverished villages, where surrounding thick jungle has been made more impenetrable by wet season flooding.
The parish priest of Bojaya said by radio earlier this week that many of his parishioners were killed when they sheltered in his church and it was hit by a home-made mortar fired by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or "FARC".