MEDELLIN, Colombia -- Gunmen apparently working for the drug cartel of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar killed three plainclothes police agents and wounded seven others in a series of retaliatory attacks aimed at exacting revenge for the police slaying of Escobar's top hitman.
Sources in the city prosecutor's office said gunmen working for the Medellin cartel's international drug ring -- mostly poor youths between the ages of 15 and 25 -- declared war Thursday on police, to avenge the killing of Escobar aide Brances Munoz by special anti-drug forces early Wednesday.
Police said unidentified gunmen armed with automatic weapons traveling in a taxi fired on four plainclothes policemen Thursday afternoon in a commerical district in Medellin, 150 miles northwest of the capital, killing two police agents immediately.
A third agent died on the way to a hospital and a fourth was recovering from bullet wounds, police said. Drug gunmen wounded six other uniformed police agents patroling residential areas in Medellin Wednesday night, authorities said.
The killings brought to 30 the number of policemen killed in Medellin by drug gunmen in the last month in violence that intensified as police claimed they were closing in on Escobar, the 42-year-old fugitive cartel chief who escaped from a luxury prison earlier this year.
Special military forces and anti-drug police surrounded Munoz, 37, in a safehouse in a residential neighborhood early Wednesday. Authorities shot him dead in a gun battle that authorities said erupted when Munoz opened fire on the police.
Munoz was Escobar's personal bodyguard and head of his well-equipped mercenary army. He was suspected by police of a wide range of violent acts, including the bombing an Avianca airliner that killed 107 people and detonating a bus packed with explosives, killing 67.
Shortly after the police gun battle with Munoz, unidentified gunmen fired on members of the Medellin district prosecutor's office in another attack classified by police as a cartel reprisal. No one was hurt in that attack.
Residents of Medellin, Colombia's second largest city and with the highest violent crime rate, was living in a climate of fear Thursday, expecting more violence from the cartel that, with Munoz as head of a mercenary army, killed an estimated 1,000 people during the late 1980s and early 1990s in bombings, mass shootings and assassinations.
Escobar, mastermind of the Medellin cartel international drug network, was still at large Thursday in spite of the surrender of seven of top lieutenants who escaped with him from the luxuriously remodeled Envigado Prison July 22.
Escobar's mother last week told reporters that her son was in 'a very safe place' and that he did not plan to turn himself in for trial in the immediate future. But Colombian police did not seem willing to wait. One police source said Thursday that 'little by little, we are closing in on Escobar.'
The drug king originally surrendered in June 1991 to take advantage of a government program that promised him leniency in prosecution for voluntarily turning himself in to authorities. But Escobar chose to escape his luxury prison with nine lieutenants in July of this year when the administration of President Cesar Gaviria tried to transfer him to a maximum security prison.
Escobar has yet to be convicted on the multiple charges that range from murder to bombings and drug trafficking.
The Defense Ministry in a statement said Thursday that the apprehension of Munoz was the result of a tip in response to the $127, 000 reward for information leading to his capture.
