Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces

President Alvaro Uribe withdrew his offer to negotiate a prisoner exchange with leftist rebels after blaming the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia for a car bomb that injured 23 people. Uribe said in a speech that intercepted phone calls established that the attack at a military university was planned by a top leader of the group, known as FARC, which has been fighting the government for more than four decades.

Thirty-eight members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, became the first Marxist guerrillas to apply for benefits under a law offering reduced jail terms to those willing to lay down their arms. The law offers a maximum of eight years for crimes such as massacre and kidnapping committed by illegal armed groups in a 41-year-old guerrilla war. More than 10,000 members of right-wing paramilitary groups have made use of the law.

Colombian rebels killed eight police officers and captured at least 30 others at a remote jungle station in what appeared to be one of the biggest blows against security forces in years, police said Sunday. The scale of Saturday's attack by hundreds of members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, became clear Sunday when police and army reinforcements reached the northern rain-forest town of San Marino.

Acting on U.S. intelligence, Colombian and Ecuadorean police arrested a top commander of Colombia's largest guerrilla army Saturday, the highest-ranking member of the leftist group ever captured. Ricardo Palmera, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia better known as Simon Trinidad, was arrested after seeking medical assistance at a clinic in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, Colombian authorities said.

Suspected leftist rebels gunned down eight peasants in a mountain village in northwestern Colombia, apparently because the villagers refused to pay a "tax" on coca leaf used to make cocaine, officials said.

Marxist rebels tried to organize an assassination attempt against President Bush during his visit to the port city of Cartagena last week, a top Colombian official said Saturday. Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters in Bogota that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a 17,000-member rebel group known as the FARC that has been fighting Colombia's government for four decades, had plotted to kill Bush.

Maria Castro knew it was bad when she saw the news that leftist rebels had killed one American and kidnapped three others after a U.S. government plane crashed north of here. "This is going to bring the war here," the 78-year-old told her daughter last week as she sat outside her small concrete home in this sweltering village about 20 miles from the crash site in southern Colombia. Three days later, Castro was outside her home again when she was killed along with Ismenia Gomez, 75.

Suspected rebel militia members incinerated a bus along a congested Bogota thoroughfare Tuesday and left gasoline bombs in three other transit vehicles in the latest outbreak of terrorism to grip Colombia's city streets. No injuries were reported in the attacks, which involved flammable substances brought on board the vehicles in a soda bottle and snack packages. About 40 commuters riding the bus that caught fire were able to scramble to safety before it was engulfed in flames about 11:15 a.m.

On the eve of his second trip to the White House, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is for the first time making overtures to this country's largest rebel group. Elected nearly a year ago on a hard-line platform to fight the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials as the FARC, Uribe revealed last week that his government had been in written contact with a faction of the 17,000-member group.

For 19-year-old Dumar Alexander, joining the army was a matter of personal honor. A resident of this isolated town perched in the green mountains of violent southwest Colombia, Alexander knows what war means. Three years ago, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials as FARC, arrived and snatched his 14-year-old brother into its ranks. Nobody in the family has heard from him since.