Another contemporary story also has the aircraft as a “Cessna” but that all three on board were dead at the crash site, but below is the latest Reuters report:
A U.S. government plane with three Americans aboard crashed on Tuesday in Colombia during a search and rescue operation for Defense Department contractors taken hostage by leftist rebels last month, a U.S. embassy official said.
Details were scarce, with the official saying only that Colombian forces had reached the site of the wrecked Cessna aircraft in the southern, war-torn province of Caqueta.
He declined comment on the possible fate of the three Americans and refused to reveal their identities, saying their families would first be notified. When asked whether the Americans were found at the crash site, or were still unaccounted for, he responded: “We’re getting some confused information on that. We should have more (details) for you in the morning.”
The episode echoed the Feb 13th crash of a U.S. operated Cessna, also in Caqueta. Marxist rebels with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC, grabbed three Americans from the crash site and declared them “prisoners of war.”
Locals also saw them kill a U.S. man and a Colombian army sergeant who resisted.
The U.S. government says the contractors had been on a mission searching for illegal coca leaf, the raw ingredient in cocaine and the main target of Colombia’s U.S.-backed war on drugs. Colombia is the world’s top cocaine producer.
Those kidnappings and killings, although dwarfed by the current U.S. war in Iraq, have been a high priority on the U.S. agenda in Latin America. The United States has dispatched emergency U.S. Special Forces to Colombia to offer intelligence assistance to find and free the missing Americans.
The Defense Department is also buzzing radio stations and printing newspaper ads with promises of more than $300,000 and a new life in the United States for Colombians who offer information leading to the rescue of the three contractors.
Tuesday’s doomed flight was part of that ongoing search and rescue mission — which also counts thousands of Colombian troops combing jungle and savanna and backed by fast Black Hawk helicopter gunships. The official said the crash would not change the course of rescue efforts.
“We don’t have plans to alter the search and rescue operation,” the official said.
The United States has poured about $2 billion into the fight on Colombia’s massive cocaine industry, and has recently allowed the South American nation to also use its aid to target leftist rebels and far-right paramilitary gunmen.
Washington brands Colombia’s outlawed forces “terrorists,” using cocaine-cash and kidnapping for ransom to fund a four-decade-old guerrilla war.
By Phil Stewart
Source: Reuters (March 26th, 2003)
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Steve ~ Touchdown-News
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March 26, 2003 at 11:17 pm