BOGOTA, Colombia -- (AP) -- Hundreds of guerrillas from the nation's largest
 rebel army launched a three-day attack on a police station, killing at least 17
 people, including nine police officers and four children, police said Sunday.

 Eight other police officers were wounded and seven more taken prisoner in the
 weekend attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

 The attack, which ended Sunday, was one of the most deadly guerrilla assaults
 on civilians in memory.

 ``I haven't words for what I'm seeing, the horror,'' state police commander Ruben
 Carillo told The Associated Press by telephone from Narino, a town of 4,000
 residents 100 miles northwest of Bogota.

 Police and soldiers arrived at noon Sunday in the sugar and coffee producing
 town, where 300 rebels attacked a police station defended by 35 officers.

 Carillo said the rebel barrage destroyed 30 homes, the mayor's office, a bank and
 a school. The civilians killed included four adults and four children.

 The police officers who weren't killed or taken prisoner by the FARC escaped
 unhurt or with minor injuries, Carillo said.

 Television images showed the smoking ruins of houses in a two-block radius
 surrounding the flattened police barracks. The buildings were reduced to rubble by
 powerful but inaccurate attacks with missiles fashioned from natural-gas
 canisters.

 Though the FARC has been in peace negotiations with President Andres
 Pastrana's government since January, no cease-fire is in effect.

 The rebels hold more than 450 police and soldiers from earlier attacks on similar
 outposts, hoping to use them to boost their position in talks to end the country's
 35-year conflict.