COLOMBIAN REBELS LEAVE BEHIND ONLY RUINS OF TOWN

BOGOTA, Colombia A picturesque mountain town lay in ruins Monday after
rebels detonated explosives in front of a church, a bank, a clinic and
other buildings.

Arboleda, 90 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota, looked as if it
had been hit by a major earthquake. White-walled, colonial-style
buildings lay in heaps, with some facades tilting at crazy angles.

Colombian troops and police searching through the rubble after the
two-day attack by hundreds of rebels found the bodies of at least
eight police officers, part of an estimated 25-member contingent that
tried to fight off the attack for two days. Four civilians, including
the wife of a policeman, were also dead.

At least three survivors were found among the local police force.

Security forces who arrived in Arboleda on Sunday evening swept
through the green hills outside town, searching for the rest of the
police contingent. The missing officers were feared dead, Colombia's
national police chief, Gen. Ernesto Gilibert, told local radio stations.

A resident identified only as Duvan told Caracol Radio that hundreds
of heavily armed rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, arrived in Arboleda on Saturday. They packed a van and a car
with dynamite and planted gas bombs around the town and then detonated
the bombs, Duvan said.

The guerrillas then hurled pipe bombs at the local police barracks to
finish off any survivors not killed in the initial blast, which
leveled most of the building, he said.

The rebels abandoned the town Sunday and clashed with advancing
government troops. One government soldier was wounded in the fighting.