By ANDREW SELSKY
  Associated Press Writer

  CARMEN DE APICALA, Colombia - Mournful relatives and townspeople buried three ''peasant soldiers'' Tuesday, the first members of a new militia the government formed to bolster its war against a ruinous insurgency to die in combat.

  The men were killed Sunday night when rebels wearing civilian clothes boldly attacked their sandbagged barracks in this tourist town, which had been considered a safe government-controlled haven 50 miles southwest of Bogotá.

  ''They put a gun to the head of one of the soldiers who was standing guard over there and shot him dead,'' Gen. Jairo Ovalle, commander of the army's 6th Brigade, said, standing in front of the barracks and pointing to a guard post at the corner next to a store selling farm products.

  The guerrillas simultaneously attacked the guard post at the other end of the street, killing the two militiamen there, then began throwing hand grenades and firing pistols at the barracks.

  Two militiamen and three townspeople, including a child, were wounded in the attack, which lasted just five minutes.

  ''They mowed them down without mercy,'' moaned Eliceo Leal, staring at his son's flag-draped coffin next to the coffins of the two other militiamen in the town's church. A military honor guard was standing at attention.

  Over the past five months, the government has fielded some 15,000 ''peasant soldiers,'' who serve in their own hometowns. The militiamen get three months of military training, compared to six months for regular soldiers.

  The program is a major component of President Alvaro Uribe's strategy to wipe out an insurgency that has sapped the potential of Colombia over the past four decades, killing about 3,500 people each year.