Search is on for US 'hostages'
2003-02-15 20:44
Florencia - Colombian military helicopters, assisted by US intelligence, patrolled over dense jungle on Saturday as troops intensified a search for three Americans feared kidnapped by leftist rebels when their US government plane crash-landed in southern Colombia.
Two other members of the crew - an American and a Colombian soldier - were killed execution style on Thursday near the plane's wreckage by rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a rebel group known as FARC that controls the region, Colombia's military said.
The Cessna plane, which the Colombian military said was on an intelligence mission, was carrying four Americans and a Colombian when its engine failed. It made an emergency landing in Caqueta province, a vast, sweltering coca-producing region and a traditional stronghold of the 17 000-strong FARC.
More than 3 000 elite counter-guerrilla troops and special mobile units are participating in the search, Colombian military officials said.
The United States, which has widened in recent years its involvement in Colombia's four-decade guerrilla war, is providing intelligence and equipment in the search of the surviving crew members, who US officials said were "civilian specialist contractors" on a routine US-Colombian mission.
US State Department spokesman Charles Barclay said on Friday he had reliable reports that the FARC had kidnapped the three other American crew members and added: "If these reports are accurate, we demand the crew members be released unharmed immediately."
Gen Jorge Enrique Mora, Colombia's chief military commander, said the five crew members were alive when the single-engined Cessna landed near the village of Puerto Rico, 400 km south of Bogota, and that rebels "executed two of them in an act of extreme cruelty."
A senior Colombian military officer said that one victim had a bullet wound in the head and the other had a bullet wound in the chest.
'Military targets'
The largely peasant FARC, which Washington brands a terrorist organisation, has long said it considers US personnel involved in Colombia's war on drugs as military targets. But this appears to be the first time Colombian rebels have killed an American working for the US government.
The plane incident pushes the United States deeper into a war that claims thousands of lives every year.
Washington, in the past wary of getting dragged into the conflict, has spent about $2 billion in mostly military aid in recent years to help Colombia destroy the world's largest cocaine industry. Last year, it authorised Bogota to use the aid to combat rebels and right-wing paramilitary outlaws.
The two bodies found near the wreckage were flown to Bogota from the Colombian military base of Larandia. US officials and Colombian investigators have not yet identified the victims.
The massive rescue mission is being launched from Larandia, a sprawling base surrounded by thick jungle, grasslands and slow-moving rivers, 375 km south of Bogota.
US Green Berets have trained Colombian anti-drug battalions in Larandia in reconnaissance missions, movement techniques and combat methods.
Some 70 US special forces are deployed in the northern province of Arauca to train Colombian troops in counter-guerrilla techniques and to defend an oil pipeline.
The FARC, Latin America's oldest guerrilla army, has in recent weeks stepped up its attacks against the government of hard-line President Alvaro Uribe, a staunch US ally who took office in August pledging to crack down on rebels.
Suspected FARC rebels detonated a massive bomb in the city of Neiva on Friday, killing at least 15 people as police raided a house full of explosives.
On February 7, FARC rebels detonated a powerful car bomb in an exclusive Bogota club, killing 35 people in the group's worst urban attack in decades.
The FARC, which says it is fighting for socialist reforms, holds about 80 high-profile Colombian hostages - including a former defence minister and a former presidential candidate. It wants to exchange them for jailed guerrillas.
If the Americans have been kidnapped, FARC rebels could use them as bargaining chips to pressure the US government to withdraw its 500-plus military and civilian personnel operating in Colombia, analysts said.
- SAPA