COLOMBIA SHOOTS DOWN SUSPECTED DRUG-RUNNING PLANE

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian Air Force fighter jets shot down a light
plane on a suspected drug-running mission over the country's
northernmost territory in the first such ``hot pursuit'' incident in
five years, authorities said Wednesday.

An Air Force statement said bursts of automatic gunfire from Air Force
A-37s downed the single-engine, Venezuela-registered Cessna aircraft
over the desert-covered Guajira peninsula Tuesday night.

The plane, which had not requested permission to enter Colombia's
airspace, was fired upon after its pilot refused to make radio contact
or obey an order to make a forced landing, the Air Force said.

Air Force commander Gen. Jairo Garcia told reporters blood but no
bodies were found in the wreckage of the Cessna, indicating its pilot
and any other crew members survived and made a getaway.

``There was quite a bit of blood,'' Garcia said.

The same white Cessna was tracked by radar early Tuesday as it flew
out of Colombia, without having filed a flight plan, and headed out
across the Caribbean toward Jamaica, Garcia said.

Colombia's Air Force has destroyed at least 10 drug-smuggling planes
in the last year, after forcing them to land on clandestine dirt
airstrips and machine-gunning from the air.

But Tuesday's incident, known as hot pursuit because of the initial
chase and then downing of a suspect plane with rapid-fire machineguns,
was the first in Colombia since 1995, the Air Force said.

Colombia produces an estimated 80 percent of the world's cocaine and
is a leading supplier of the high-grade heroin sold in the United States.