Government removes refugees from former Red Cross office in Col

BOGOTA, Colombia -- With police standing guard, the last squatters left a former Red Cross office Saturday, nearly three years after hundreds of homeless families stormed the building.

The families became symbols of the war-torn country's internal refugee crisis after they occupied the building on Jan. 4, 2000, bashing in doors and holding Red Cross workers hostage for hours.

Authorities said the 47 families in the building departed on their own accord, but one of the refugees said they were forced out.

"They said if we didn't leave voluntarily, they'd kick us out," Javier Gonzalez, 45, told The Associated Press as police surrounded the building in an upscale Bogota neighborhood.

Most of the 143 people living in the building were taken to hotels where they'll stay until government housing opens up, said Luis Alfonso Hoyos, director of the Social Solidarity Network.

Hoyos denied claims that the squatters were forced out and said some of the families owned their own homes.

He also said agents from the attorney general's office searched the premises for 11 people wanted by the law and two people were arrested.

Red Cross workers moved their offices to another site in the capital after the takeover and have no plans to return to the privately owned building, Red Cross spokesman Carlos Rios said.

Families inside the building lived in makeshift beds, hanging sheets and blankets between them for privacy.

Although many of the people who originally stormed the building had moved out after accepting government settlements, Gonzalez and hundreds of others remained.

Gonzalez said he fled to the capital with his six children after outlaw combatants killed his brother and father in a 1997 massacre in northern Cordoba province.

"We don't what we'll do now," he said.

Colombia is torn by a 38-year civil war that pits the leftist rebels against the government and right-wing paramilitary groups. The conflict kills about 3,500 people each year and an estimated 2 million people have been displaced from their homes.