Colombian rebels kill four in New Year attack

BOGOTA, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Colombian rebels shot and killed at least four civilians, including two community leaders, after dragging them out of their homes during a New Year's Day assault on neighboring hamlets, an official said today.

Carrying a list of names with them, FARC guerrillas killed the victims in El Cedro and El Pueblito villages in the northern province of Antioquia late on Monday, Jose Jair Jimenez, a state governor's office representative said.

''A group of insurgents, apparently from the 36 Front of the FARC, appeared and proceeded to massacre four people, including the president and vice president of the community action board,'' Jimenez told Reuters by telephone. ''We are still trying to confirm a fifth victim.'' He also said authorities were investigating motives for the killings.

Aided by millions in US funds, President Alvaro Uribe has sent troops to push the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, back into the jungles and mountains. Violence from the four-decade conflict has dropped dramatically.

But the FARC, financed by the cocaine trade, is still fighting Latin America's longest-running insurgency. Hundreds of troops and police are killed each year and thousands of civilians forced from their homes by the conflict.

Parts of rural Antioquia are known for their crops of illegal coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC more than 20 years ago, recently restarted efforts to enter into talks with the guerrillas over releasing hostages they are holding, including three U.S. military contractors captured in 2003.

The FARC, started in the 1960s as a peasant army fighting for a socialist state, wants to exchange 62 key hostages for jailed rebel fighters as a step to ending the conflict. US officials brand the group terrorist drug-traffickers.

Uribe, a US-trained lawyer, is now fending off a political scandal linking several of his congressional allies to illegal right-wing paramilitaries accused of atrocities committed during a dirty war against the rebels. The militias recently disarmed under a peace deal with Uribe.

REUTERS KR VC2230