http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americ....ap/index.html
Colombia mounts counterattack against rebels
Sunday, June 26, 2005; Posted: 7:33 p.m. EDT (23:33 GMT)
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- President Alvaro Uribe flew to the battlefields of southwest Colombia to oversee a massive counterattack against leftist rebels on Sunday, a day after 25 soldiers were killed in attacks across the country.
As many as 300 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, on Saturday attacked oil wells near Puerto Asis and ambushed an army convoy, killing at least 19 soldiers. Rebel casualty figures were not known.
More than 1,000 troops backed by helicopter gunships hunted down several hundred rebels believed to be heading for the nearby border with Ecuador to seek refuge from the fighting, army officials said.
Uribe insisted that his government won't retreat from the decision to defeat the rebels. "Terrorism is an obstacle to democracy," Uribe said in brief remarks to reporters before traveling to Puerto Asis, 530 kilometers (330 miles) southwest of Bogota.
Another 19 soldiers who went missing during the combat were found alive early Sunday, said Acting Army chief Gen. Hernan Alonso Ortiz.
"They are in good health," Ortiz said in a statement. The soldiers got separated from their unit during the clashes Saturday and had been unable to contact their commanders.
A further six soldiers died Saturday when they clashed with rebels blockading a road in northeast Colombia -- making it the deadliest day for the military since Uribe came to power three years ago on pledges of crushing the 40-year-old insurgency.
Before going into a meeting with Uribe in Puerto Asis, Mayor Jorge Eliecer Coral said he was going to ask the president to boost security along the border with Ecuador to curb the flow of rebels and arms.
"We are fed up that insurgents cross over from Ecuador to commit crimes in our lands," Coral told reporters. For years, FARC guerrillas and have slipped across the 640-kilometer (400-mile) border into Ecuador's northern jungle region to seek refuge from battle and to buy supplies.
Dozens of desperate family members, meanwhile, gathered outside the regional army headquarters in the city of Cali on Sunday to find out if their loved ones were among the dead.
"I'm so worried, we haven't had any news from him for several days and he is supposed to leave the army in two months," Efrain Rodallega, whose brother was sent to guard oil wells near Puerto Asis, told RCN television.
The FARC has this year launched some of its boldest attacks on the military since peace talks collapsed in February 2002, killing more than 130 soldiers.
The rebel offensive came after military commanders at the start of the year said the rebels were being brought to their knees and that a U.S.-backed, 3-year-old military buildup ordered by Uribe had forced the FARC into irreversible decline.
Analysts say the FARC wants to undermine Uribe's re-election hopes by showing that his security crackdown has failed and that only peace talks with a leader more sympathetic to the rebels can lead to peace.
"These attacks are a sign that the FARC is gearing up for a military escalation ahead of the May 2006 elections to show that (Uribe's) democratic security policy is a failure," said professor Roman Ortiz, a terrorism expert at Los Andes University.
The Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial authority, has yet to rule on whether Uribe can seek a second consecutive term.
Army officials maintain the FARC is made up of 12,000 fighters now, down from 18,000 a year ago, due to deaths, captures and desertions brought on by the government offensive.
Concern has mounted recently that the rebels could gain a foothold in areas currently controlled by outlawed right-wing paramilitary militias, which are due to disband by the end of the year under a peace process with the government that critics say will let killers off the hook.
Colombia's drug-fueled conflict pits the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army against the paramilitary militias and government forces, killing more than 3,000 people every year.