By TIM JOHNSON
             Herald Staff Writer

             MITU, Colombia -- When 1,200 guerrillas swarmed into this state capital one
             morning last week, they didn't just shoot the place up and leave.

             They stayed for three days, devastating the town and giving rebel leaders a major
             military victory as they enter long-awaited peace talks, scheduled to begin by Nov.
             17.

             Rebels set off 200 homemade bombs, destroyed 40 buildings, gutted the
             courthouse and Public Registry, and left the state agrarian bank and a new 18-bed
             hospital in ruins.

             So many bombs went off that trees along the main street are largely denuded.
             Three-foot craters pockmark the road. Wrapped in downed power lines, the
             burned hulk of a truck lies on its side, one of its tires lodged on a nearby roof.

             ``It was terrible,'' lawyer Fabio Gomez Rengifo said.

             No longer satisfied with hit-and-run attacks, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
             Colombia (FARC) have adopted a new strategy: Using overwhelming military
             force, the insurgents are showing Colombians that they can overrun and occupy
             virtually any town or small city in eastern Colombia.

             Talks are planned

             The Nov. 1-3 siege of Mitu -- one of the most violent attacks in 34 years of
             guerrilla war -- came as the government of President Andres Pastrana took
             concrete steps to hold direct negotiations with rebel leaders.

             As a prelude to the talks in San Vicente del Caguan, the government on Saturday
             declared a 16,260-square-mile demilitarized zone in Meta and Caqueta states.
             That area, from which the armed forces have withdrawn, is a traditional stronghold
             of the guerrillas. Their central command is believed to operate there, near the
             foothills of the Andes, 175 miles south of Bogota.

             No cease-fire exists, though, and the attack on Mitu indicated that any talks will
             occur against a backdrop of bloodshed.

             The assault of Mitu left 43 police, soldiers and civilians dead, an unknown number
             of guerrilla fatalities, and 84 police missing and presumed in the hands of guerrillas,
             authorities said.

             More such routs are likely, experts say.

             Outposts are vulnerable

             Colombia's 146,000-member armed forces and 110,000-member police force
             are deployed so thinly across the country -- especially in the east -- that police
             outposts and rural army bases can't fend off the massive attacks that FARC rebels
             now mount, analysts said.

             The 120-officer detachment in Mitu had no chance against the 1,200 attacking
             rebels, said Alvaro Rojas, head of a local food cooperative.

             ``They were doomed. There was nothing they could do,'' he said.

             A town of 5,400 people, Mitu is the capital of Vaupes state, a jungle region
             abutting Brazil. Access is only by river and the occasional airplane.

             Arriving aboard launches on the Vaupes River, rebels swarmed into Mitu at 5 a.m.
             Nov. 1, firing homemade artillery constructed from heavy liquid-natural-gas
             canisters packed with explosives and shards of metal.

             ``They had studied the whole town very carefully -- who lived where, who was
             here,'' said Nestor Fabian Romero, the Town Hall secretary.

             An all-day battle

             Positioned on all sides of the fortified police outpost, rebels lobbed canister bombs
             from several blocks away. Gunfights lasted throughout the day. Air force planes
             later strafed the center, bombing rebel positions.

             Leading a visitor on a tour of the rubble, Rojas pointed to a pile of wood.

             ``That was a bar. That was a house where a bomb hit. This was a trench where
             eight police died.''

             Rojas said hundreds of guerrillas guarded Mitu's airstrip, ensuring that no military
             aircraft could land to reinforce the besieged police unit. With police holed up in
             barracks and trenches, rebels had the run of the town.

             ``They went into homes and ordered people to cook for them. They asked for
             `guerrilla rice' -- that means rice mixed with pasta,'' said Gloria Alvarez, a social
             worker.

             Commanding the attack was Henry Castellanos, a leader known as Romaña,
             whose rebel front earlier this year captured four U.S. bird-watchers at a
             roadblock. One escaped; the three others were freed after more than a month.

             Rebel casualties, too

             By late Tuesday, rebels withdrew from the town, fleeing in dozens of river
             launches, which the army said it bombed. While unconfirmed, rebel casualties
             appeared high.

             ``I saw them take away 15 or 20 guerrillas slung in hammocks with IV tubes in
             them,'' said Santiago Forero, a salesman for Sky TV.

             ``One of them arrived here with a wound in the abdomen,'' said Monica Pelaez, a
             nurse at the 18-bed hospital. ``We thought we could help him.''

             But explosions soon engulfed the hospital, shattering windows in the two operating
             rooms and sparking a fire that burned down a pharmacy.

             ``The boy told us that 1,200 of them had come here and that they had prepared
             this for a long time,'' Pelaez said. ``Some of them were boys 15 years old, just
             kids.''

             During the attack, rebels battled police until police ammunition ran out, forcing
             those still alive to surrender.

             The strategy has been refined in other attacks this year. Rebels seek as many
             police and army hostages as possible to use as pawns in peace talks. They now
             hold more than 300 soldiers and police.

             FARC leaders have demanded that the hostages be swapped for 452 insurgents in
             Colombian prisons. The issue looms as a stumbling block in the early stages of
             peace talks. Public opinion runs against liberating jailed insurgents, some of whom
             are accused of atrocities.

             Earlier incidents

             The Mitu attack follows three similar mass attacks earlier this year in which large
             numbers of hostages were seized:

               On March 3, about 500 rebels overran an army counterinsurgency patrol near
             El Billar in the jungles of Caqueta state. Sixty-three soldiers were killed and 43
             taken hostage.

               On Aug. 3-5, rebels swarmed into the jungle towns of Uribe in Meta state and
             Miraflores in Guaviare state, overrunning a major police counternarcotics base in
             the latter attack. More than 100 people were killed, and rebels fled with 133
             hostages.

             Wherever the attacks occur, townspeople fear that the army will later introduce
             clandestine paramilitary units to fight any rebel presence. Paramilitary groups are
             blamed for most of Colombia's human rights atrocities.

             Since fighting ceased in Mitu, more than 800 people have left aboard rescue
             flights, some vowing never to return, clearly fearful of paramilitary action.

             ``They can come in disguised as engineers, as contractors or as state employees,''
             said Jose Alfonso Rojas, a state employee in a land-title office.

             At Town Hall, Romero, the town secretary, noted that Mitu is the only state
             capital ever taken over by the rebels. He said the emboldened guerrillas have
             shown that much of Colombia is vulnerable to attack.

             ``There are many towns and cities in this country as defenseless as this town -- or
             more so,'' he said.
 

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