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Mexicans may be among dead in attack in Ecuador

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MEXICO CITY — Mexico was reeling Friday from the discovery that at least six Mexican nationals were present at a rebel camp where a top insurgent commander was killed last weekend in Ecuador.

Up to five Mexicans were killed in the March 1 attack by the Colombian military on a rebel base in Ecuador, Ecuadorean security minister Gustavo Larrea said Friday. A sixth Mexican, 26-year-old Lucia Morett, survived.

Experts say that it's the first time Mexican nationals have been known to die alongside members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's oldest guerrilla group.

The Mexicans and other visitors from Chile apparently were planning to speak before a FARC meeting when they were killed. Journalists given a tour of the camp organized by the Ecuador government Thursday were shown a classroom area.

The Mexican presence at the camp added to questions of a possible link between FARC and a spate of pipeline bombings in Mexico last year. Mexican political analysts and police officials have said the pipeline bombings were so sophisticated that whoever did them may have received special training. Unheard of until last year in Mexico, pipeline bombings have long been carried out in Colombia by the FARC. Mexico is the United States' second-largest oil supplier.

The group that claimed responsibility for the Mexican bombings, the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, has traditionally bombed ATM machines and other "nuisance bombings" with lesser impact before strategically hitting pipelines that fed industrial operations of automakers like Volkswagen.

Another possible FARC link with Mexico is in the drug trade. FARC has long been accused of raising funds by selling cocaine, and Mexico is on a major route of illegal drugs heading to the U.S. market.

Local media identified one of the dead as Juan Gonzalez del Castillo. Morett said four other Mexican nationals were with her at the time of the attack.

Gonzalez and Morett were students at the state National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both were members of a radical student group that supported the FARC, according to a Web site operated by members. Larrea, Ecuador's Security Minister, said "more than 10, a large group" of people under 24, died in the attack that killed FARC's No. 2 official, Raul Reyes.

S. American leaders avert conflict / A9