REBELS CRUSH COLOMBIAN TROOPS IN JUNGLE AMBUSH

Worst Defeat In Three Decades

Bogota - Dozens of some of the government's best troops have been iklled,
apparently in an ambush, in Colombia's southern jungles-the military's
worst defeat in more than 30 years of fighting leftist rebels.

The rebels said 70 soldiers were killed during the 24 hour battle Monday
and Tuesday in a remote jungle region that is a center of Colombia's
cocaine kade.

Eight soldiers were taken prisoner and three army helicopters were damaged,
the rebels said yesterday. There was no mention of rebel casualties.

The military command lost contact with its troops Monday and has no precise
casualty figures because reinforcements have not yet arrived at the scene.

Sporadic fighting and bad weather yesterday prevented Red Cross workers
from reaching the jungle region 260 miles south of Bogota to evacuate the
dead and at least 30 wounded troops. The chief Red Cross delegate, Pierre
Gassmann, said the rebels radioed him Wednesday to send in a team.

About 120 soldiers of the Third Mobile Brigade were fighting guerrillas of
the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, in the jungle near the Caguan River.

Military commanders refused to comment on the fighting, but General Jose
Sandoval, second-incommand of the air force, said more soldiers are being
airlifted into the region to back 1,000 reinforcements flown in Wednesday.

President Ernesto Samper's former national security adviser Alfredo Rangel,
called the defeat "without question, the military's worst catastrophe. This
cannot be considered bad luck.

"The fact that this battle was fought on equal conditions between elite
forces shows the increasing power of the rebels and the growing
vulnerability of the army."

He said the rebels again proved themselves to be a better, more disciplined
fighting force than the army. They "will now be more motivated to continue
dealing blows," he said.

A senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity said all
but 19,500 of Colombia's 120,000 soldiers are poorly trained young
conscripts, and morale is low.

Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri denied rebel claims that military
aircraft killed three civilians in the area.

"It's pure jungle there, and there is no civilian population," Echeverri
told Caracol radio yesterday. "What there is, is all the coca in the world,
and those crops are protected by the guerrillas."

Taxes on coca, the raw material for making cocaine, are the main source of
rebel revenue in the region.

In addition to nearly daily attacks on police and army posts, the
guerrillas have handed the armed forces a string of recent defeats.

Samper has made peace overtures, but the rebels have refused to negotiate
with him.

The guerrillas pose no serious threat to Colombia's major cities, but they
are widely considered to be a growing threat to Colombian democracy. The
latest attack comes right before Sunday's congressional elections.

In June, Samper demilitarized a large swath of southern Colombia, including
the area of this week's combat, in order to facilitate the release of 70
soldiers taken prisoner by the rebel group. The rebels took 18 more
soldiers captive December 21 when they seized a remote communications post
in southwestern mountains.

Before this week's ambush, the military's most serious defeat occurred on
Aug. 31, 1996, when a rebel column overran a base near the Ecuador border
in Las Delicias, killing 27 soldiers.