
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006280742
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/11   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOGOTA, COLOMBIA                                LENGTH: Medium

7 POLICE, JUDGE SLAIN IN COLOMBIA

Assassins hired by drug bosses are being blamed in the killings of another seven policemen, and authorities say a judge who handled drug trafficking cases also has been shot to death.

Three of the policemen were killed Wednesday on the streets of the northwestern city of Medellin, headquarters of the world's largest cocaine gang, a spokesman with the city police department said by telephone.

The other four policemen were killed in the town of Dorada, about 75 miles north of the capital of Bogota. They were in a patrol car when gunmen in a passing car opened fire with submachine guns and pistols, police said in a news release carried by the radio network Caracol.

The Medellin cartel has unleashed a bloodbath against Colombian policemen, especially in Medellin. Including Wednesday's deaths, 132 policemen have been killed in the city this year.

The cartel has said it will pay about $4,300 for each policeman killed in Colombia. Drug traffickers and government security forces have been locked in a deadly war since the slaying last August of a presidential candidate who advocated extradition of drug suspects to the United States.

The judge who was killed, 29-year-old Samuel Alfonso Rodriguez, was driving a car accompanied by his wife when he was shot to death in the northeastern city of Bucaramanga, police said in a communique broadcast by the RCN radio network.

He was the fifth judge killed since the government crackdown on drug traffickers began on Aug. 18.

Also Wednesday, police in Medellin deactivated a car bomb comprised of 1,000 pounds of dynamite, the police spokesman said.

The dynamite was in a taxi and was armed with a fuse and detonators, the policeman said. The taxi was in a parking lot only about a half-block from the city government's administrative office building.

It was the second car bomb deactivated in Medellin in a week.

In the last 10 months, the traffickers have responded to the crackdown with 283 terrorist acts, including one that brought down a domestic airliner, that have killed 274 people.

by CNB