Clashes and violence raged through Colombia Saturday, leading to the death of at least 37 persons, police and local media reported.

In northern Colombia, government troops and militants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) clashed Saturday, with 27 rebels and six government troops killed and 78 members of the rebel groups captured, according to local media.

Meanwhile, near the city of Barrancabermeja, four members of the same family were killed by rightwing paramilitaries, police said.

Colombia has been locked in a four-decade civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries fight one another. The conflicts kill more than 3,000 people a year.

Xinhua