BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Four Venezuelans belonging to Colombia's
                 Marxist FARC rebels were killed in a shootout with the army, a military
                 chief said on Thursday, underscoring the guerrilla group's reach into the
                 neighboring country.

                 Two Colombian rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known
                 by its Spanish acronym FARC, also died during the firefight on Tuesday in the city
                 of Riohacha, in Colombia's northwestern Caribbean province of La Guajira.

                 "I personally saw the identity of four Venezuelans among the dead," said Army
                 Gen. Gabriel Ramon Diaz.

                 The shootout occurred as the army rescued a Venezuelan woman who had been
                 kidnapped on April 15 and held for a $10 million ransom.

                 Although the FARC regularly uses kidnapping to fund its 38-year war against the
                 Colombian state, the revelation that four of the rebels were Venezuelan highlights
                 the group's reach inside the neighboring Latin American country.

                 Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have been strained recently amid
                 accusations that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is sympathetic to the FARC.
                 Chavez, a left-leaning former paratrooper, has denied charges by the Colombian
                 army that FARC has set up camps in Venezuela, which shares a 1,380 mile (2,220
                 km) border with Colombia.

                 Colombia's drug-fueled war pitting the FARC and other smaller left-wing rebel
                 groups against the army and right-wing paramilitary outlaws kills about 3,500
                 people per year.

                 Independent presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe, who has promised to take a
                 hard-line against what is Latin America's oldest guerrilla army, is widely expected to
                 win the election on Sunday.

                    Copyright 2002 Reuters.