Colombia's right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), killed 1,124 people among those it had kidnapped, said a non-governmental organization (NGO), local media reported on Wednesday.

In a report published by New Hope for Hostages, the group said it had presented a long list of people who disappeared, and are now believed to be dead, to the AUC heads who were now jailed in the northeastern town of Itagui.

The AUC said that they had only kidnapped those who had links with leftist guerrilla groups.

The AUC has its origins in vigilante groups set up by cattle ranchers and drug traffickers to combat left-wing guerrillas. It has engaged in a peace process with the government, and some 31,000 AUC fighters have been demobilized.

But Colombia's human rights groups have repeatedly criticized the government for giving too much concession to the AUC.

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

(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2007)