Pubdate: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Juan Forero COLOMBIA SAYS REBELS HAVE KILLED 56 TROOPS BOGOTA, Colombia, Oct. 20 - Fifty-four soldiers and two police officers have died in three days of fighting with leftist rebels in a small northwestern town, military officials said today. Among them, 22 died when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed as a ground battle raged. The fighting, the heaviest between government troops and rebels in months, began on Wednesday when 500 troops from the largest guerrilla army began an attack on Dabeiba, a town along a strategic corridor through which guns and supplies arrive from Panama, 100 miles away. Thirty-two soldiers and two police officers were killed on the ground when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked the town of 50,000 people. On Thursday, in the midst of the fighting, the helicopter, transporting reinforcements, crashed, killing all 22 aboard. The government did not estimate how many guerrillas died. The rear rotor of the copter "apparently touched the mountainside and produced the accident," Gen. Eduardo Herrera told El Tiempo, a newspaper here. The military acknowledged that the rebels had fired at the helicopter. The heavy loss of life was seen as a blow to the military. But President Andres Pastrana said today to an audience at the University of the Rosario here, "My conviction is that the pursuit of peace has never faltered and that, in contrast, violence always fails." Brig. Gen. Gabriel Eduardo Contreras, commander of the 1st Division of the Colombian military, called the 40-hour battle in Dabeiba a victory for his forces. But as troops of the Fourth Brigade fought five rebel fronts in Dabeiba, another guerrilla force overran Bagado, a small river community in Choco Province. Seventeen police officers stationed at the barracks there when the assault began on Wednesday were missing on Thursday and were presumed to have been killed or taken hostage. Hundreds of miles away, in southern Putumayo Province, a jungle region where nearly half of the coca plants in Colombia are grown, pitched fighting between rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces continued. More than 1,500 farmers caught in the struggle have fled into Ecuador, with hundreds of others seeking refuge in other parts of Colombia, said Francisco Segura, director of the Association of Municipalities of Putumayo, which represents mayors in Putumayo. "People are taking their clothes, their children, a few belongings, and they're gone," Mr. Segura said. "The strategy is not massacres or killing. But it's pushing people out, getting everyone out of their homes." The fighting is breaking out as the rebels brace for American-backed multibillion-dollar counternarcotics operations to begin in the coca-growing regions of Putumayo. A political scientist in Bogota, Fernando Giraldo, said the rebels were trying to draw attention from Putumayo, where officials say the rebels profit handsomely from the cocaine trade. "The rebels understand that if they do these things near the frontiers," Mr. Giraldo said, "those countries will at least pressure the Colombian and American governments." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D