Colombia hunt for kidnap tourists

FARC has kidnapped thousands of people

Thousands of Colombian troops are searching a mountainous jungle region for eight foreign tourists kidnapped by left-wing rebels.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are believed to have captured the group of four Israelis, two Britons, a German and a Spaniard as the tourists hiked to ancient ruins.

Colombian officials are said to be working with their Israeli, German, Spanish and British counterparts to try to secure the tourists' release.

Up to 1,500 police and soldiers as well as nine Black Hawk helicopters are reported to be involved in the search in the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada, 750 kilometres (465 miles) north of the capital, Bogota.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed to BBC News Online that two Britons were being held, and said that consular officials would travel to the region when conditions permitted.

The British pair were named on Monday night as Londoner Matthew Scott, 19, and Mark Henderson, 31, originally from Lincoln.

Kidnap ordeal

"The security forces have completely mobilized, including troops and helicopters, to resolve this problem," said President Alvaro Uribe.

The tourists were kidnapped as they hiked in the area, near the Caribbean coast, where a so-called Lost City (Ciudad Perdida) sits in the jungle built by an indigenous civilisation 500 years before Christ.

There was no opportunity to oppose them. They knew too well what they were doing Ran Atzmon Israeli tourist

The Israeli ambassador said that the four Israelis had travelled to the area because they had a keen interest in pre-Colombian Indian ruins.

Dutch tourist Mathijs Grote Beverborg, 29, told Reuters how he and some other hikers were tied up by the rebels and left behind.

"They surprised us early in the morning at five o'clock. They took all people to a field. In the field they divided us into two groups. I don't know why, I think they only had room for eight, or more than eight was too slow or something like that," he said.

Israeli tourist Ran Atzmon told Israeli media he was ordered "to put on hiking shoes, not sandals, and take a minimum of equipment, without sleeping bags, to do it as fast as possible".

But he was also left behind, tied up in a small room which the rebels told him was booby-trapped with a grenade. They later fled through a window.

Kidnap capital

The area of Sierra Nevada where the tourists were snatched is a disputed territory, fought over by Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drugs traffickers, none of whom welcome foreign visitors, says the BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Bogota.

Most of Colombia's 3,000-odd kidnappings every year - that is one every four hours - are carried out by FARC, who use the ransom to fund their 39-year war on the state.

They often make their hostages walk for days between malarial jungle prisons.

Guerrillas have been known to murder their hostages rather than allow them to be rescued and have held kidnap victims for up to five years whilst waiting for a ransom, our correspondent says.

As Latin America's biggest guerrilla group with 17,000 fighters, FARC is currently holding dozens of political prisoners, including a former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, and three US military contractors it wants to exchange with rebels held in Colombian jails.