Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Colombia's major cities and small towns on Thursday to protest the killing of 11 provincial lawmakers by the country's largest rebel group.

In the capital, thousands of residents waved white handkerchiefs from their home and office windows. At midday, automobile drivers honked their horns and other protesters formed human chains.

Their outrage was aimed at the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which said on Thursday that 11 provincial deputies it had been holding hostage since 2002 were killed in a June 18 rescue attempt by the Colombian Army.

The protesters demanded the government and the FARC agree on a prisoner exchange and sign a peace treaty to end the internal 40-year war, which kills and displaces thousands every year.

They urged "freedom without conditions now" for more than 3,000 people held hostage by the guerrillas.

"It is good to know so many hearts are as excited as mine. I ask that they be liberated now," Clara Rojas, mother of a man held hostage for five years by the FARC.

But the government and the FARC appeared unlikely to reach any agreement over a hostage-for-prisoner swap.

President Alvaro Uribe, long applauded for his tough stance on the guerillas, said "we cannot accept rebels being released from prison only to go back to killing people."

Wearing a white T-shirt reading "freedom without conditions now," Uribe and his ministers on Thursday attended a mass at the Primada de Colombia cathedral.

(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2007)