GUNMEN SLAY 21 IN A SMALL COLOMBIA TOWN

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Suspected paramilitary gunmen executed 21
unarmed residents of a small town in an oil and cocaine-producing
region near the Venezuelan border on Thursday, officials said.

The shootings by men in camouflage uniforms occurred in two poor
barrios of Tibu, said Ruben Sanchez, the local delegate of the federal
human rights ombudsman's office. Police confirmed the official's account.

"They came and dragged the people from their homes and massacred them
right in front of their families," Sanchez told The Associated Press
by telephone from the town of 15,000 residents in Norte de Santander
State.

"The town has completely shut down. The people are staying in their
homes."

Witnesses said there were nine assailants, eight of them in camouflage
uniforms and one in civilian clothes, Sanchez added.

The victims were shot repeatedly, 19 of them dying immediately and two
in hospitals, said a Tibu police official who asked not to be named.
Five people were seriously wounded.

The killings bore the trademark style of rightist paramilitary
groups.

Meanwhile, army aircraft sighted the wreckage of a police helicopter
apparently shot down by rebels with seven officers aboard Wednesday
near the southwestern town of Barragan.

Combat continued in the area Thursday, preventing troops from
inspecting the site. But a guerrilla commander from the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, told Caracol television that three
police died in the crash and the others had fled on foot.

Violence has risen sharply in Norte de Santander in the past year, as
both sides vie to control lucrative "war taxes" on the region's
burgeoning coca crop, the plant used to make cocaine.

Suspected paramilitary groups massacred 36 villagers in Tibu and the
nearby town of La Gabarra last August. The killings forced nearly
3,000 people to flee into Venezuela and prompted the firings of the
regional army and police commanders for failing to prevent the incursion.

The town's Roman Catholic bishop fled after being kidnapped twice by a
small rebel faction.

Human rights groups allege the Colombian military gives tacit, and
sometimes direct support to the paramilitary groups, who are also
backed in their anti-guerrilla campaign by wealthy landowners and drug
traffickers.

The military denies the charges, which figure prominently in debates
in Washington over a $1.7 billion anti-narcotics aid package for
Colombia that has been approved by the House of Representative but
awaits action in the Senate.

Critics say the Colombian military should not receive U.S. support
unless it moves more aggressively against paramilitary violence.

Thursday's killings coincided with a visit to Colombia by Marine Gen.
Charles Wilhelm, the top U.S military commander in Latin America, who
defended the military's human rights record in addressing a conference
in Bogota.

Wilhelm said Colombia's military leaders were men with an "unwavering
moral compass" who had been unfairly tainted by crimes committed
largely in earlier periods of the country's nearly 36-year conflict.