By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer
Colombia - An American and a Colombian whose bodies were found in the wreckage of U.S. government plane had been shot to death. President Alvaro Uribe said the two had been murdered.
The State Department said the other three people in the plane, all Americans, have been taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Barclay, said: "We have reliable reports that crew members are being held by the terrorist group the FARC. If these reports are accurate we demand the crew members be released unharmed immediately." The State Department says the plane was a U.S. counter-drug aircraft.
"There were various bullet impacts on the two bodies," Alonso Velasquez, director of the attorney general's office in Florencia, told The Associated Press. He said the gunshot wounds were the cause of death.
According to one report based on a radio intercept, rebels quickly arrived on the scene of the plane crash and captured the survivors. Uribe lamented the deaths of "two people aboard the plane — a sergeant in our army and an American citizen — whose murders have been confirmed." It was unclear if the two men had been hit by groundfire while in the plane, or had been shot after the crash.
The FARC was also blamed for an explosion Friday in Neiva that blew up a house and killed 15 people, including eight policemen who were investigating a reported rebel plot to assassinate Uribe.
