Rebels Kill 17 Colombian Police Officers

Relatives of soldiers cry in Monteria, Colombia after an attack by hundreds of leftist rebels who bombarded the Tierradentro's police station, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006. Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, for killing at least 16 officers. (AP Photo/ Meridiano de Cordoba) (Meridiano De Cordoba - AP)

BOGOTA, Colombia -- After a bombing injured 23 people at a Bogota military base last month, President Alvaro Uribe decided to halt peace overtures to Latin America's oldest and most potent insurgency.

Uribe discarded efforts to attain a prisoner swap with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, instead ordering the military to rescue the 60-odd people held by the group.

On Wednesday, the peasant-based rebel band launched its bloodiest attack since Uribe was re-elected in May by voters endorsing his hard line against the group known as the FARC. The FARC killed 17 police officers at a remote outpost in an attack that appeared to be part of a coordinated national offensive.

Analysts called the apparently well-coordinated attack a rebuke to Colombia's military and its U.S. backers, who contended that they had weakened the FARC to the point where it was down to about 12,000 fighters and was no longer able to launch such large-scale assaults.

"The government is put in a rather uncomfortable position when, after announcing a devastating military offensive against the FARC, it ends up being the FARC that strikes the first blows," Alfredo Rangel, Colombia's top military analyst, told The Associated Press after Wednesday's pre-dawn attack.

Authorities say Wednesday's assault happened like this:

Rebels bombarded the police station in Tierradentro, 230 miles northwest of Bogota, with makeshift mortar shells fired from propane gas cylinders, killing three officers. Then they ambushed a column of police reinforcements, killing 14 officers and a female civilian.

"There's a calm around Tierradentro, but underneath people remain very worried," said Jairo Lopez, the top security official in Cordoba state, where the attack occurred. "Many houses were damaged and a few were totally destroyed."

The FARC campaign since the Oct. 19 Bogota base attack has included bombings of military bases and the downing of power lines in contested regions.

"The FARC is looking to reclaim territory that was once held by the (far-right) paramilitaries," said political analyst Leon Valencia. Tierradentro is in rugged mountains into which the landowner-backed paramilitaries had moved in the late 1990s.

Lopez said about 450 rebels took part in Wednesday's attack, with the rebels splitting their forces into three separate units of about 150 fighters to hit the station from every side.

National police director Gen. Daniel Castro said 11 rebels were killed in the fighting, though the Defense Ministry reported recovering the bodies of just five guerrillas.