CIA AGENTS KILLED OR CAPTURED IN COLOMBIA

Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives have been captured by Marxist
guerrillas in Colombia, it appeared yesterday, while another two were dead,
perhaps assassinated, after a light aircraft they were travelling in
crash-landed.

United States officials were prepared only to admit that one of their
aircraft, carrying four American citizens and a Colombian, was forced to
make an emergency landing in the guerrilla-dominated southern province of
Caqueta.

"Somewhere during the flight, the engine cut out and they were looking for a
place to put down," said a State Department spokesman, Chip Barclay.

Sources in the Colombian defence ministry have indicated there was more to
the situation, but said they were prevented from commenting officially as
the United States has imposed a media blackout and taken over the operation.

Officials from the prosecutor-general's office who flew over the site said
two foreigners' bodies could be seen.

A source at the defence ministry, who insisted on anonymity, said that the
bodies each had a shot to the head, while the other three people on board,
two more Americans and a Colombian army officer, were missing, presumed
kidnapped by the guerrillas.

He also said that the Americans were CIA contractors on an anti-drug
intelligence mission. "We were on the scene within 30 minutes of the crash,"
said the defence source.

"The survivors would have known we would come for them as there is a
military base with helicopters very close. So we must assume they are in the
hands of the Farc [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]."

The United States stepped up its involvement in the 39-year civil conflict
under President George W Bush, who has embraced the battered Andean nation
in his war on terrorism. Three of Colombia's warring factions, including the
Farc, are on the White House's terrorism list.

* Suspected rebels planning to assassinate President Alvaro Ulribe with a
large bomb detonated it yesterday when police discovered it, killing 15
people and wounding 30 others. The bomb was packed into a car near the
airport in the southern city of Neiva. Nine police officers were among the
dead.