Dominican presidential candidate's bodyguards kill two members of governing party

                  SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- The bodyguards of the leading
                  presidential candidate shot and killed a governing party official and another man
                  in what the opposition claimed was a response to an assassination attempt.

                  The most violent confrontation yet in the campaign was an indication of rising
                  tensions and the high stakes involved in May 16 elections in this Caribbean nation
                  of eight million people.

                  The opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party said someone shot Saturday night
                  at the car of its presidential candidate, Hipolito Mejia, and that his security guards
                  returned fire, killing two men.

                  But President Leonel Fernandez's Dominican Liberation Party said the security
                  guards shot first.

                  The shooting took place in Moca, 90 miles from the capital, as Mejia's car was
                  passing in front of the house of Luis Terrero Gil, 41, a local official of the
                  Liberation Party.

                  Terrero, the director of the National Center for Science and Art, was killed, as
                  was Rafael Penalo, 29, who was on the street in front of the house along with
                  other supporters of the Liberation Party.

                  Francisco Javier Garcia, Liberation Party campaign manager, denied anybody
                  shot at Mejia's car and said the killings were "a premeditated assassination."

                  He said Terrero was on the patio when the shooting erupted. Terrero called out
                  to his three children to come in from a small garden in front of the house, and
                  was then struck by eight bullets, he said.

                  Garcia charged that members of the opposition party then invaded the house and
                  beat up Terrero's wife and a son.

                  The Revolutionary Party said it was an assassination attempt against its
                  candidate.

                  "We understand that it was something prepared, premeditated against Hipolito,
                  because it was against the car he was in," Sen. Andres Bautista, a party member,
                  was quoted as saying in Hoy, a daily newspaper.

                  Mejia is a left-leaning politician who has threatened, if he wins, to prosecute
                  leading members of the government for alleged corruption. Government
                  supporters fear a Mejia victory could derail and reverse the great economic
                  strides made by the current administration, which has overseen a 50 percent
                  expansion in the Dominican economy through privatizing state companies and
                  streamlining bureaucracy to encourage international trade.

                  Recent polls have shown Mejia leading with 40 to 50 percent of the vote, with
                  rest divided between the two other candidates -- Danilo Medina of the Liberation
                  Party and former President Joaquin Balaguer of the Social Christian Reformist
                  Party.

                  Fernandez, the current president, is barred by law for running for another term.