DEATH TOLL SEEN RISING AT COLOMBIAN MASSACRE SITE

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombia's state prosecutor is investigating
the disappearance and possible murder of at least 32 peasants by far-right
paramilitaries in the remote locality of Naya, local television said on Sunday.

Investigators have so far confirmed six killings by the paramilitary
outlaws, who have accused local peasants in the dirt-poor area of
southwestern Colombia of collaborating with leftist rebels, RCN television
said.

The channel showed images of the body of a adolescent woman being exhumed
from a shallow grave. Her throat had been cut and her hands cut off, RCN said.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the figure of 32 killings with
the prosecutor's office. Colombia's official ombudsman told reporters on
Saturday that over 25 people had been killed in Naya by paramilitaries --
who often target peasants they suspect of giving food or other aid to
leftist rebels.

Colombia is locked in a 37-year-old, three-way war pitting leftist
guerrillas against the armed forces and the illegal paramilitaries. About
40,000 people have been killed in fighting in the past 10 years alone, and
two million others have been forced to flee their homes.

Hundreds of peasants began to flee from the area, which can only be reached
by hours on foot or mule, when a squad of several hundred members of the
paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, marched in
early last week.

They told tales of people murdered with knives and their bodies dumped by
the road.

RCN showed pictured pictures of abandoned huts, built of wood and on stilts.

Region key for cocaine trade

The villages around the River Naya near the Pacific Coast about 240 miles
(400 km) southwest of the capital, Bogota, are key to controlling the flow
of cocaine to the Pacific, local television said, citing army sources.

AUC leader Carlos Castano, a former army scout, is fiercely critical of
President Andres Pastrana's attempts to negotiate peace with the guerrillas.

Despite public revulsion at the paramilitaries' often brutal methods, their
ranks are estimated to have grown ninefold to 8,000 fighters in the past
eight years.

They are funded by ranchers and businessmen tired of the inability of the
armed forces to defeat the rebels. They, like the Marxist rebels of the
17,000-member FARC -- the Spanish initials of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia -- draw substantial funds from the massive local cocaine
trade.

The AUC has been locked in combat in southern Bolivar Province with the
FARC and the Cuban-inspired ELN since early March, when the army pulled out
of the area. The army has confirmed the deaths of 26 paramilitary and rebel
fighters, but refugees from the area say the real figure is higher.

The United States is providing $1 billion in mainly military aid for
Pastrana's "Plan Colombia" offensive against drugs. But Washington says it
wants to stay out of the war.