Four children killed in Colombia shootout

MEDELLIN, Colombia (Reuters) -- A school group got caught in the cross-fire of fighting between Marxist rebels and the army in a war-torn corner of Colombia on Tuesday, leaving four children dead and seven injured, a medical official said.

The children, aged eight to 13 years, were strolling through the countryside during a school trip near the town of Pueblo Rico in Antioquia province when shooting erupted between an army unit and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas.

An army officer accused the ELN, Colombia's second largest guerrilla force, of using the children as "human shields" after two of their fighters were killed in a battle earlier in the day. There was no independent confirmation of the charge.

The casualties in Pueblo Rico capped a wave of violence between insurgents and security forces Tuesday morning in which at least other 10 rebels and one army captain died, authorities said.

"We have four children dead and seven or eight injured by gunfire and shrapnel," regional hospital spokesman Orlando Vergara told the Radionet radio network. "Apparently the children were caught in cross-fire."

A teacher was believed to be among the injured, he said.

In just the last 10 years, Colombia's long-running civil conflict, which began in the mid-1960s, has left more than 35,000 people dead. Most have been civilians.

In just the last five years more than 1.1 million others have fled their homes to avoid the political violence.

Gen. Eduardo Herrera, commander of the army's Fourth Brigade based in the northwest industrial hub Medellin, said the children were gunned down when ELN rebels grabbed them to avoid coming under fire from the army.

"The guerrillas used these children as human shields," he said.

In other fighting elsewhere in Antioquia province on Tuesday, a 100-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel unit killed three civilians as they raided the town of San Rafael, machine-gunning the police station and burning 25 buses and trucks.

In central Cundinamarca province, meanwhile, near the capital Bogota, six FARC guerrillas and an army captain died in two separate firefights.

Colombia's two main rebel forces, the Cuban-inspired ELN and the Soviet-inspired FARC, have stepped up armed actions around the country in the two months since the U.S. Congress approved a record $1.3 billion package of mostly military aid to fight drugs and guerrillas.

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