BOGOTA (Reuter) Colombian police said Tuesday they had seized millions of
dollars in assets belonging to Pablo Escobar, the late leader of the Medellin
drug cartel.

The state security police, or DAS, said the assets were confiscated from
Escobar family members and people who worked for him in the northwest city
that gave his drug mob its name.

Valued by DAS chief Gen. Luis Enrique Montenegro at more than $5 million, the
property seized under terms of an asset forfeiture law passed by Congress
last year included warehouses, apartments, commercial storefronts, offices
and garages, all in or near Medellin.

Escobar was killed in a shootout with police on a Medellin rooftop in
December 1993. But the city he once ruled like his personal fiefdom remains
Colombia's most violent, long after Escobar's army of traffickers and hired
assassins disbanded following his death.

Police said at least seven youths, all of them with records of criminal
activity, were killed in Medellin early Tuesday by gunmen waging a campaign
of ``social cleansing'' aimed at ridding the city of ``undesirables.''