Source: Knight Ridder News Service Pubdate: Thursday, March 5, 1998 Author: Tim Johnson JETS BOMB COCA-GROWING AREAS IN COLOMBIA BOGOTA, Colombia -- Air force planes bombed Colombia's principal coca-growing area Thursday in a desperate attempt to rescue stragglers from an army counterinsurgency unit smashed by leftist insurgents in fierce fighting that may have taken more than 100 lives. ``The clashes were intense, practically 36 straight hours of fighting,'' said Gen. Mario Hugo Galan, the army commander. Air force jet fighters conducted ``selective bombing'' along the Caguan River in southern Caqueta state to open an escape route for the counterinsurgency unit, air force commander Fabio Zapata Vargas said. The army's second in command, Maj. Gen. Fernando Tapias, said the death toll may surpass 100, between slain soldiers and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), but added that a precise toll remained uncertain. The rout of the elite army unit, made up mainly of professional soldiers, triggered a tide of criticism of the leadership of Colombia's 146,000-strong armed forces, after repeated defeats by rebels in the past two years. ``This is painful,'' said Omar Botero Paramo, head of a national business group known as the Inter-Guild Chamber. ``It is blow after blow. ... We are going to grow accustomed to the army getting defeated and defeated until (the rebels) arrive right at Bogota, Cali and Medellin.'' Fighting broke out Monday afternoon near the village of El Billar on the Caguan River, 290 miles south of the capital, in an area that is one of the most fertile coca-growing regions in South America. A FARC statement late Wednesday claimed that 70 soldiers had been killed and said the fighting lasted until Tuesday afternoon. It said military bombing of civilian targets continued after the clash ended, and said bombs killed three civilians. Victor Nunez, head of the town council in Cartagena del Chaira, said families were fleeing the bombing and he had heard a report that four members of a family were killed. The office of President Ernesto Samper, who will reportedly travel to the region today, issued a statement saying FARC rebels were trying to upstage congressional elections Sunday as well as block access to coca fields and processing laboratories in the Caqueta region. ``In the region of the combat, the FARC maintain a kind of sanctuary and control hundreds of laboratories for the processing of cocaine,'' Gen. Tapias was quoted as saying in the statement. U.S. officials say FARC insurgents protect coca fields of the eastern and southern jungles in alliance with cocaine cartels. A FARC spokesman in Mexico City, Marco Leon Calarca, turned surly in an interview with the Radionet station when it was suggested the rebels were trying to protect coca fields. ``National and international public opinion know that the FARC have absolutely nothing to do with drug trafficking,'' Leon Calarca said. Since April 1996, when a FARC column ambushed an army convoy and killed 31 soldiers along an oil pipeline in the southern Andes, the insurgents have repeatedly routed the army. In the most humiliating incident, a FARC column that attacked an army jungle outpost Aug. 30, 1996, killed 26 troops and kidnapped 60 others, whom they held captive for 10 months.