CITY STRANGLES AS CHAOS REIGNS

Rebels Declare Southern State No-Drive Zone

PUERTO ASIS (AP) -No gasoline. No electricity. No running water. This
ramshackle city has been living in fear and deprivation since Colombian
rebels declared the southern state of Putumayo a no-drive zone just over a
week ago and began blowing up bridges, electrical towers and oil production
facilities.

With shortages worsening in the region, a Colombian air force C-130 ferried
in 12 tons of food Thursday and then flew out at night carrying 82
civilians who had been stranded in Puerto Asis, the state's main city.

"We are enduring uncertainty," Julio Rodriguez said, standing in a crowd of
locals watching soldiers unload sacks of rice, sugar and other staples from
the Hercules cargo plane.

"We don't know what's going to happen," he said. "For example, we hear the
outlawed groups may be surrounding the town. During the night we hear
explosions."

U.S. officials who began aerial fumigation of cocaine-producing crops in
this isolated state almost five years ago believed then that the "outlawed
groups" that control cocaine production, leftist rebels and their
right-wing paramilitary foes, would be long gone by now. The theory was
that with the coca fields killed by herbicide, the gunmen would leave.

When the fumigation began in 2000, some 163,000 acres of coca flourished in
Putumayo, according to the United Nations. By the end of last year, only
10,838 acres remained.

But some of the peasant farmers who make a living growing coca have
doggedly replanted when the spray planes leave. And the nine-day-old
offensive shows the rebels are far from gone. Last month, they killed 22
soldiers in an attack on a remote Putumayo outpost.

The camouflage-clad fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
have burned at least two buses and two trucks that violated the travel ban.
A dozen civilians traveling in a bus were wounded in a crossfire between
troops and rebels. On Wednesday, rebels killed two soldiers and wounded
four in a convoy bringing reinforcements from a neighboring state.

Army commanders say the guerrilla offensive is aimed at forcing the
military to divert its already stretched forces from attacking rebel camps
and other hard targets in this Andean nation.

Putumayo is paralyzed. The few commercial flights on small planes out of
Puerto Asis are booked solid. Motorists are afraid to drive on rural roads.
Even though numerous oil wells dot the state and a pipeline runs through
it, gasoline stations are mostly dry.

"Up to the moment, it's chaotic," said Victor Alfonso Montenegro, general
manager of Contramayo Ltd., a regional bus company.

He said the travel ban was in effect indefinitely for all of Putumayo's
highways, most of them dirt roads that cut through jungle and withered coca
plantations.

The United Nations said Friday it was "extremely concerned" by the state's
shortages of food and other essentials.

"We urge all parties to allow persons in the combat zones to move to safer
areas and to permit humanitarian workers to reach people in need of
assistance," Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees, said in Geneva.

Puerto Asis Mayor Luis Fernando Gaviria told The Associated Press that much
of the food brought by the C-130 would be taken by military helicopters to
Orito and other towns where food is scarce.

For now, food shortages have not yet hit Puerto Asis' 28,000 residents,
though some supermarkets are short of fresh vegetables. But the municipal
water system shut down when the electricity went out, and some people are
using wells to get water.