British oil company BP will pay an undisclosed amount to some 1,000 Colombian farmers who sued for $28m (€22m), claiming a pipeline the oil giant built endangered their livelihoods.

Colombia’s defence minister has denied accusations that army troops massacred eight peasants, including four children, in a remote village in northwest Colombia a week ago, saying no soldiers were in the area at the time.

THE recent decision by the Colombian courts to overturn the acquittal verdict of the Colombia Three has once again brought to the fore certain worrying tendencies in Ireland.

An explosion killed at least four people and injured more than 30 others in an apparent terror attack on a crowded bus in northwest Colombia, police said.

Suspected rebels fired from the mountains at President Alvaro Uribe’s helicopter as he arrived at a village in north-west Colombia.

Gunmen on motorcycles have killed the new chief of secret police as he drove his car in Medellin, Colombia.

Suspected rebels rained mortar shells onto downtown Bogota and the presidential palace as hard-liner Alvaro Uribe was sworn in as president of Colombia.

Rescuers have evacuated more than a dozen wounded people from an isolated corner of Colombia after battles between rebels and rival paramilitaries killed 68 civilians, among them 38 children, authorities said.