At least 600 peasants, including many children, have fled their homes in lawless northern Colombia as heavy fighting raged between rival right-wing paramilitary groups despite peace talks with the government, authorities and witnesses said on Monday.
The clashes, the heaviest yet involving former allies who fought against Marxist rebels in Colombia's four-decade guerrilla war, were taking place near San Roque, a mountain town some 220km northwest of the capital Bogota.
Witnesses said some 2,000 heavily armed illegal fighters of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known in Spanish as AUC, and the Central Bolivar Block, or BCB, launched an offensive against the rival Metro Block about 10 days ago.
There were no independent reports of casualties.
The AUC, Colombia's largest paramilitary force, declared a ceasefire in December and is engaged in peace talks with President Alvaro Uribe.
But the Metro Block, a former ally of the AUC, has refused to join the talks, saying it will only lay down arms when leftist rebels are defeated.
The well-armed paramilitaries sprang up in the 1980s as vigilante armies funded by cattle ranchers to combat rebels. But paramilitary factions began fighting among themselves when the illegal force became involved in the drug trade.
The 13,000-strong AUC has threatened several times to "annihilate" the 1,500-strong Metro Block but the San Roque combats are believed to be the first major clash between the two groups.
"We are going to hold out until we run out of bullets," the Metro Block's chief, who is known by the alias "Rodrigo," said near this mountain town as the sound of machine gunfire and explosions rattled in the distance.
"The AUC and the BCB are launching a final desperate offensive against us. They are trying to take our positions."
Some 600 peasants, including 140 children and 55 elders, crammed into a refugee camp near San Roque and were in desperate need of blankets, food and medicines, said Lucas Jaramillo, a provincial official.
Government troops were dis-patched to San Roque, a violent area in the Andes mountains near the city of Medellin.
Colombia's war has forced more than 2 million people from their homes. Thousands of people are killed every year.
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