COLOMBIA SAYS REBELS HAVE KILLED 56 TROOPS

BOGOTA, Colombia, Oct. 20 - Fifty-four soldiers and two police officers
have died in three days of fighting with leftist rebels in a small
northwestern town, military officials said today. Among them, 22 died when
their Black Hawk helicopter crashed as a ground battle raged.

The fighting, the heaviest between government troops and rebels in months,
began on Wednesday when 500 troops from the largest guerrilla army began an
attack on Dabeiba, a town along a strategic corridor through which guns and
supplies arrive from Panama, 100 miles away.

Thirty-two soldiers and two police officers were killed on the ground when
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked the town of
50,000 people. On Thursday, in the midst of the fighting, the helicopter,
transporting reinforcements, crashed, killing all 22 aboard. The government
did not estimate how many guerrillas died.

The rear rotor of the copter "apparently touched the mountainside and
produced the accident," Gen. Eduardo Herrera told El Tiempo, a newspaper
here. The military acknowledged that the rebels had fired at the helicopter.

The heavy loss of life was seen as a blow to the military. But President
Andres Pastrana said today to an audience at the University of the Rosario
here, "My conviction is that the pursuit of peace has never faltered and
that, in contrast, violence always fails."

Brig. Gen. Gabriel Eduardo Contreras, commander of the 1st Division of the
Colombian military, called the 40-hour battle in Dabeiba a victory for his
forces.

But as troops of the Fourth Brigade fought five rebel fronts in Dabeiba,
another guerrilla force overran Bagado, a small river community in Choco
Province. Seventeen police officers stationed at the barracks there when
the assault began on Wednesday were missing on Thursday and were presumed
to have been killed or taken hostage.

Hundreds of miles away, in southern Putumayo Province, a jungle region
where nearly half of the coca plants in Colombia are grown, pitched
fighting between rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces continued. More
than 1,500 farmers caught in the struggle have fled into Ecuador, with
hundreds of others seeking refuge in other parts of Colombia, said
Francisco Segura, director of the Association of Municipalities of
Putumayo, which represents mayors in Putumayo.

"People are taking their clothes, their children, a few belongings, and
they're gone," Mr. Segura said. "The strategy is not massacres or killing.
But it's pushing people out, getting everyone out of their homes."

The fighting is breaking out as the rebels brace for American-backed
multibillion-dollar counternarcotics operations to begin in the
coca-growing regions of Putumayo.

A political scientist in Bogota, Fernando Giraldo, said the rebels were
trying to draw attention from Putumayo, where officials say the rebels
profit handsomely from the cocaine trade. "The rebels understand that if
they do these things near the frontiers," Mr. Giraldo said, "those
countries will at least pressure the Colombian and American governments."