By REUTERS

          BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 15 -- Colombian security forces said
          they killed more than 60 Communist rebels heading for a safe
          haven in southeast Colombia today, three days after guerrillas inflicted
          one of the worst defeats of the year on a military unit near the Panama
          border.

          Television images showed that the entire downtown area of Hobo, a
          colonial town in central Huila Province, had been leveled.

          Piles of still-smoldering ruins remained.

          There was, however, no independent confirmation of the death toll. A
          reporter for the nationwide radio network Radionet, speaking from
          Hobo, said no rebel corpses had so far been found.

          All sides in Colombia's 30-year-old war, which has claimed more than
          35,000 lives in the last 10 years, routinely exaggerate enemy losses and
          minimize their own casualties.

          The director of police operations, Gen. Alfonso Arellano, said the
          300-strong column of rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
          Colombia, known as the FARC, was decimated by a wave of air strikes
          as it retreated after an attack on Hobo.

          "More than 60 guerrillas died," General Arellano said. "This gives us the
          encouragement to carry on fighting." He that one policeman died in the
          attack on Hobo.

          "The guerrillas wanted to carry out a demolition job" on the town, he
          said, "but this time they could not."

          Army officials said at least 50 guerrillas of FARC, Latin America's largest
          surviving rebel army, had died. The column was thought to be headed for
          a Switzerland-sized region in the southeast, which President Andrés
          Pastrana cleared of security forces as a forum for slow-moving peace
          talks, officials said.

          On Sunday, 600 rebels overran a Navy base in the northwest coastal
          town of Jurado, just 15 miles from the Panamanian border. Independent
          civilian authorities said at least 45 marines died and said there were no
          reports of guerrilla casualties.

          Navy commanders, however, said 23 marines were killed and that 42
          rebels died.

          According to the armed forces, some 200 guerrillas have been killed in
          fighting in the last month. But only a handful of bodies have been seen by
          reporters.

          The military, which has suffered a string of devastating defeats by the
          country's estimated 20,000 rebels in the last three years, is currently
          being restructured.

          One of the cornerstones of the restructuring is the army's recently created
          Rapid Deployment Force. A mission statement describes its role as
          launching swift counterattacks and increasing the rebel body count by a
          "minimum of 50 percent."

          The unit, however, which has 4,200 men and is backed by a formidable
          array of air power, was nowhere to be seen at the height of the fighting
          Sunday in Jurado.