Gunman Kills Leftist Lawmaker in Medellin

BOGOTA, Colombia â€”  A man walked into a government building in Medellin on Friday, pulled out a submachine gun and killed a leftist leader of the Antioquia state assembly before being slain by guards, police said.

The victim, Gabriel Jaime Santamaria, was state leader of the leftist Patriotic Union, whose ranks have been decimated the last four years by death squads believed to be operated by drug traffickers.

The slaying came less than 24 hours after the Patriotic Union refused to support a proposal by drug traffickers to negotiate an end to the violence that has plagued Colombia since mid-August.

Santamaria was sitting at his desk in the Apuajara government building downtown when he was killed at 3:30 p.m., according to police in Medellin, home of the most powerful cocaine cartel.

The gunman was killed in a hail of gunfire from guards who belong to Colombia’s secret police, a police spokesman said. Three persons believed to be accompanying the gunman were arrested.

Earlier Friday, hundreds of Colombian police officers and soldiers armed with automatic weapons manned checkpoints in the nation’s major cities after a bomb attack on a police bus in Medellin left five officers dead and 16 others injured.

Three other bombs exploded in Bogota, the capital, late Thursday and early Friday, injuring one person. Two more bombs were deactivated in Bogota and Barranquilla, police said.

The bomb in Medellin exploded Thursday night just as the bus passed. The bus was carrying about 40 police officers to their posts.

The bomb, containing about 65 pounds of dynamite, was detonated by remote control, according to Col. Humberto Camero, the police chief in Medellin.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but drug traffickers were quickly blamed.

Afterward, the most rigid security measures seen since the government declared war on drug traffickers last August were put into force in Colombia’s five largest cities--Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla and Cartagena.

Security forces here believe that the scores of bombings in Colombia in the last two months are part of the drug traffickers’ campaign to persuade the government to stop extraditing trafficking suspects to the United States.