Colombian rebels kill 14 troops in ambush

BOGOTA, Dec 24 (Reuters) Colombian rebels ambushed an army patrol and killed 14 soldiers in one of the worst attacks this year on troops fighting in President Alvaro Uribe's US-backed campaign to end a four-decade insurgency.

The soldiers were hunting for rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest guerrilla group, after receiving information they were about to attack a small town in southern Meta department.

''The troops went to intercept the guerrillas, found a camp in the jungle and were attacked. In the combat two officers and 12 troops were killed yesterday, including an undetermined number of rebels,'' Armed Forces Commander Gen. Freddy Padilla told reporters.

Uribe, who receives millions of dollars in US military aid each year, has pushed the left-wing FARC back into the jungles and mountains and reduced violence and kidnapping that once plagued cities, towns and major highways.

But with as many as 17,000 fighters still roaming rural Colombia, the FARC has shown it remains a potent force financed in part by the country's huge cocaine trade.

Last month, hundreds of guerrillas attacked a rural hamlet police station and killed at least 16 officers. The police post had only recently set up in an area that once was controlled by illegal paramilitaries who have demobilized in a peace deal.

A month later 17 soldiers were killed in a rebel attack on their patrol.

The latest assault came just days after Uribe's government renewed an offer to enter talks with the FARC over the release of hostages the guerrillas are holding, including three US military contract workers captured on an anti-drug mission.

Uribe, re-elected last year after Colombians applauded his security crackdown, had ended efforts to start talks with the FARC over a hostage exchange after a series of rebel attacks.

Hundreds of troops and police are still killed each year by rebel attacks and landmines and thousands of civilians are forced from their homes by the fighting in rural parts of the Andean country.

The FARC was set up in the 1960s to fight for a socialist state its leaders believe would address the vast inequalities between the country's rich and poor. Washington brands the FARC a terrorist group funded by drug trafficking.

Reuters SSC GC1058