FARC attack religious procession, kill several

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday April 19, 2003 17:25 by joe ranii

Why do some Irish people apparently think that "demented acts" such as these are a good idea ?

From Reuters

Colombian Good Friday shooting kills three

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Three Colombians, including a 14-year-old boy and a soldier, have been killed by suspected Marxist rebels firing into a crowd at a Catholic ceremony reenacting the crucifixion of Christ.

The shooting erupted during a morning Good Friday ceremony in the coffee growing town of El Dolores, about 125 miles southeast of Bogota.

Another three people, including a young boy, were wounded. Some were hit by bullets in their legs.

"The procession was just starting at the park, when we heard the gunfire. Everybody started running, and the boy, the tall one,
he was killed," a witness, who asked to identified only as Maria, told Reuters.

Colombia, a deeply Catholic nation of 44 million people, is gripped by Latin America's oldest and most deadly guerrilla war. Thousands are killed in the conflict every year.

"This was a demented act by the insurgency, in what was a moment of reflection," said Gov. Guillermo Jaramillo, of Tolima
province.

SCAR ON THE TOWN

The town's mayor, Mercedes Ibarra, whose 10-year-old nephew was apparently wounded in the shooting, said the attack had
scarred her small town on what should have been one its proudest days.

"I had a town full of tourists ... who had arrived here to enjoy Holy Week and they had to deal with the ferocity of the guerrillas,
who were determined to wipe out the population," Ibarra told the local newspaper El Tiempo.

After the shooting, the town's priest Genaro Mosquera gathered a small group of residents in the church and asked them to pray for the souls of the dead, and for peace. Only a fraction of his parish showed up while the rest shuttered themselves at home in fear.