Bogota - Two days of clashes between indigenous peoples and police have claimed at least one life and injured an estimated 50 people as native communities blockaded the main road between the cities of Popayan and Cali.

The clashes on Wednesday alone injured 20 people, none of them seriously, a source at the town hospital said. The death occurred on Tuesday.

The demonstrators are demanding access to land and insisted that the government put an end to the violence that indigenous leaders suffer.

Bogota - Eight Colombian soldiers were killed Wednesday when they stepped into a mine field as they fought leftist rebels in south-western Colombia.

Army spokesmen said a sergeant and seven enlisted soldiers died in the incident outside the municipality of Barbacoas, in the Narino province, on the border with Ecuador.

The radio network Caracol quoted Brigadier General Leonardo Barrero as saying that the mine field had been set up by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Bogota  - Colombian police were surprised Friday when they discovered that a thief that was shooting at police officers was a 10-year-old boy who engaged in crime alongside his father.

The incident happened in the city of Cucuta, capital of the Norte de Santander province, near the border with Venezuela, when police were called in to intervene over a burglary at a condominium building.

Colonel Carlos Villadiego, police commander in the province, said a patrol was deployed and found two suspects who were holding hostage a private watchman.

Bogota  - Colombian authorities on Thursday arrested lawyer Guillermo Valencia, the brother of the country's Interior and Justice Minister Fabio Valencia, over alleged ties to a runaway drug boss.

Guillermo Valencia, who was until recently head of the public prosecutor's office in Medellin, was arrested in that city and was set to be taken to Bogota for questioning, the authorities said.

Bogota - In clashes between Colombian military and leftist rebel group

Bogota  - The Colombian Army on Tuesday detonated a bicycle- bomb that alleged leftist rebels had planted near an Army garrison in the north-eastern province of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela.

An Army statement said that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had planted the bike with a view to "attacking the troops" in the town of Tame.

"When they noticed the strange presence of the bomb, the military officers immediately proceeded to cordoning off the area and defusing it in a controlled way," the statement said.