Pubdate: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) Copyright: 2000 Chicago Tribune Company Contact: 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611-4066 Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/ Author: Will Weissert, Associated Press COLOMBIAN REBELS LEAVE BEHIND ONLY RUINS OF TOWN BOGOTA, Colombia A picturesque mountain town lay in ruins Monday after rebels detonated explosives in front of a church, a bank, a clinic and other buildings. Arboleda, 90 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota, looked as if it had been hit by a major earthquake. White-walled, colonial-style buildings lay in heaps, with some facades tilting at crazy angles. Colombian troops and police searching through the rubble after the two-day attack by hundreds of rebels found the bodies of at least eight police officers, part of an estimated 25-member contingent that tried to fight off the attack for two days. Four civilians, including the wife of a policeman, were also dead. At least three survivors were found among the local police force. Security forces who arrived in Arboleda on Sunday evening swept through the green hills outside town, searching for the rest of the police contingent. The missing officers were feared dead, Colombia's national police chief, Gen. Ernesto Gilibert, told local radio stations. A resident identified only as Duvan told Caracol Radio that hundreds of heavily armed rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, arrived in Arboleda on Saturday. They packed a van and a car with dynamite and planted gas bombs around the town and then detonated the bombs, Duvan said. The guerrillas then hurled pipe bombs at the local police barracks to finish off any survivors not killed in the initial blast, which leveled most of the building, he said. The rebels abandoned the town Sunday and clashed with advancing government troops. One government soldier was wounded in the fighting. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens