BOGOTA (Reuters) -- Almost a quarter of a million people were forced to
                  flee their homes in the first nine months of this year to escape the political
                  violence of Colombia's civil conflict, according to a report published Sunday.

                  The figure is equivalent to about 25 percent of the total number of displaced
                  civilians officially reported in the past 10 years -- making 1998 one of the
                  worst years on record for internal refugees.

                  The independent Consultancy on Human Rights and Forced Displacement
                  (Codhes) said 241,312 people, from 48,000 separate families, had
                  abandoned their homes by the end of September. No comparison was given
                  for the same period last year.

                  One of the hardest-hit areas, with 10,000 displaced people, was northern
                  Bolivar province, where ultra-right death squads have been battling for
                  weeks to dislodge Marxist guerrillas from one of their traditional strongholds.

                  Another 6,500 civilians were forced to leave a mountainous region of
                  northern Cordoba province, known as the Nudo de Paramillo, where
                  Colombia's most-feared right-wing paramilitary chieftain, Carlos Castano,
                  has a hideout.

                  "Some 240,000 Colombians have been displaced so far this year, which
                  could make 1998 the worst year for forced displacement in the last 15
                  years," Codhes researcher Jorge Rojas told the regional El Colombiano
                  newspaper, which published parts of the report.

                  The report stopped short of directly blaming guerrillas, paramilitary fighters
                  or the security forces for the mass displacements.

                  Outlawed paramilitary gangs this year have stepped up attacks on those they
                  suspect of being guerrillas.

                  At the same time, hundreds of people are reported to have left an area the
                  size of Switzerland in southeast Colombia that has been cleared of
                  government troops in an effort to jump-start peace talks with guerrilla
                  chieftains. The demilitarization has effectively ceded full control of the area to
                  the rebels.

                  Colombia's displaced people rarely live in refugee camps, except for brief
                  periods immediately after leaving their homes, but stay with relatives
                  elsewhere or flock to the shanty towns that ring Bogota, the northwest city
                  of Medellin and other large cities.

                  That situation has obscured the true scale of Colombia's internal refugee
                  problem, according to human rights groups.

                  Colombia's guerrilla war began in the mid-1960s and has become the
                  longest-running civil conflict in the hemisphere with at least 35,000 dead in
                  the past 10 years alone.

                   Copyright 1998 Reuters.