COLOMBIA SHOOTS DOWN COPTER THAT AIDED PARAMILITARY FIGHTERS By REUTERS

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 6 (Reuters) - Colombia's air force said today that it
had shot down a helicopter providing air support to outlawed paramilitary
gunmen who last week battled leftist rebels in a fight that killed at least
108 people, among them 45 children. The air force said the Bell-202
helicopter was hit in the tail as it tried to escape toward Panama after
apparently scouting targets. The damage forced the craft to land, and the
air force later destroyed it.

President Andres Pastrana has ordered a force of 4,000 troops to retake the
remote western jungle region. But the army has yet to arrive in the
villages of Bojaya and Vigia del Fuerte, four days after a bomb attack on a
church in the area killed dozens of people taking refuge from the fighting.

The army believes that as many as 600 paramilitary fighters were engaged in
combat last week with about 1,000 leftist rebels. The villages are on the
Atrato River, a hotly contested artery for cocaine and weapons smuggling
across the porous jungle border with Panama.

Both the paramilitaries and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, have been designated terrorist groups by the United States.

Colombia's 38-year-old war pits the leftist rebels against the armed forces
and the illegal paramilitary fighters, who were founded by wealthy cattle
ranchers to fend off the guerrillas. The conflict has claimed 40,000 lives
in the past decade.

Also today, an American-made Black Hawk helicopter belonging to the
Colombian Army crashed, apparently because of a mechanical failure, killing
one soldier and injuring four others near the border with Venezuela, the
army said in a statement.