COLOMBIAN SAYS FLIERS WERE SHOT

Bodies Found In Plane; 3 Americans Missing

FLORENCIA, Colombia -- The bodies of an American and a Colombian found amid
the wreckage of a U.S. government plane involved in military activity had
bullet wounds, a Colombian official said Friday.

The single-engine plane went down Thursday in rebel territory in southern
Colombia. The U.S. Embassy said the crash followed engine trouble.

"There were various bullet impacts on the two bodies," said Alonso
Velasquez, director of the attorney general's office in Florencia. President
Alvaro Uribe said the two had been murdered.

It was unclear if the two men had been hit by groundfire while in the plane,
or had been shot after the crash.

The three other occupants of the plane were missing. Authorities believed
they had been captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia --
known by its Spanish initials, FARC -- the nation's largest rebel group.

The four Americans aboard the plane were contractors for the U.S. Southern
Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the
Caribbean, U.S. government officials said in Washington.

The U.S. Embassy would not identify those aboard the plane, or say who they
worked for or why they were in the region, an area largely controlled by
FARC.

U.S. forces have been moving beyond fighting Colombian drug trafficking to
also helping the government battle insurgents.

PLOT UNCOVERED: A bomb that FARC apparently planned to use to kill President
Uribe exploded Friday in the southern city of Neiva. It killed 16 people,
wounded 30 and gouged a 15-foot-deep crater in the ground.

Police said members of the rebel group set off the bomb when police found it
during a search for explosives prior to a visit by Uribe today. The
explosives were found at a house along the flight path to the local airport.
Hernando de Valenzuela, chief of the local prosecutor's office, said the
rebels had planned to blow Uribe's plane out of the air as it passed low
overhead.

Uribe, whose father was killed by rebels 20 years ago in a kidnapping
attempt, narrowly survived a FARC assassination attempt during his campaign
in April.

The 50-year old lawyer took office on pledges to crack down on rebels. He
has declared a state of emergency and has raised taxes to boost the military
and police.