TWENTY-SIX REPORTED KILLED IN COLOMBIAN COMBAT

BOGOTA (Reuters) - At least 19 soldiers and seven Marxist rebels have died
in the latest round of fighting for control over one of Colombia's key arms
and drug-smuggling routes, authorities said on Sunday.

Gen. Nestor Ramirez, the army's second-in-command, said the fighting began
on Thursday in a rugged mountain corridor of Antioquia province, where up
to 400 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels staged an
aborted attempt to seize control of the main highway linking the northwest
city of Medellin with the banana-growing region of Uraba.

Uraba, which stretches from the Caribbean coast to Colombia's
jungle-covered border with Panama, is the site of frequent clashes between
rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups seeking to dominate a web of
lucrative smuggling routes used in arms-for-drug deals.

Colombia is the source of 80 percent of the world's cocaine and a leading
supplier of the heroin sold on U.S. streets.

"So far, unfortunately, it has to be said that we've lost 19 of the
nation's soldiers," Ramirez told the Radionet radio network, when asked
about the fighting centered in the Andes mountain corridor known as La Llorona.

"Operations continue with the support of the Air Force," he added.
"Obviously there are numerous guerrilla casualties."

Ramirez said only seven rebel bodies had been counted so far, however.

Both sides in Colombia's protracted internal conflict, which has taken
35,000 lives since 1990, routinely exaggerate enemy casualties and minimize
their own.

The FARC, founded as a pro-Soviet Marxist guerrilla force in the 1960s, is
Latin America's largest and oldest rebel army.