COLOMBIAN TROOPS KILL 3 REBELS IN HUNT FOR US HOSTAGES

BOGOTA -(Reuters)- US-trained Colombian troops exchanged gunfire yesterday
with leftist guerrillas holding three US Defense Department contractors but
did not free the captives, the army said. The government soldiers killed
three guerrillas in ''very heavy fighting,'' said a Colombian Army officer,
who asked not to be named. ''According to intelligence reports, we know that
it is the same guerrilla column that kidnapped the three Americans.''

Troops from a US-trained antidrug battalion killed the three rebels and
retrieved their bodies. The troops are part of a 4,000-member force hunting
for the Americans who were seized when their plane crashed in southern
Colombia Feb. 13.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish initials
FARC, said Saturday it had the Americans, calling them ''gringo CIA agents''
sent to spy on them.

The rebels said the rescue operation should be called off or the Americans'
lives would be in danger.

The US government demands the release of the three men, who it says were
civilians working on a Defense Department contract.

Colombian officials say they were on a routine mission to find illegal coca,
the crop grown to produce cocaine, when their Cessna aircraft's single
engine failed. They were forced to crash-land in the jungle province of
Caqueta.

Peasants said they saw the guerrillas shoot and kill an American and a
Colombian army sergeant who had been aboard, before taking away the three
Americans.

The guerrilla group, which has long regarded US personnel supporting
Colombia's anticocaine war as military targets but had never before killed
or kidnapped any, says it shot down the plane. A Reuters correspondent
reported finding it broken into pieces and riddled with bullets on a jungle
hillside.

The United States has spent about $2 billion in recent years in mainly
military aid for Colombia's offensive against cocaine, and recently lifted
restrictions stopping the Colombians using that aid against guerrillas.