BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- A U.S. helicopter technician working under
                  contract for British oil giant BP Amoco has been kidnapped by leftist rebels in
                  an oil-rich region of eastern Colombia, police said Saturday.

                  Matthew Aaron Burtchell was snatched late Friday by four heavily armed
                  gunmen as he traveled by taxi to the town of Yopal, provincial capital of
                  Casanare, police said.

                  Burtchell, whose age and home town were not given, worked for aviation firm
                  Air Logistics and was based at BP Amoco's 400,000 barrel per day
                  Cusiana-Cupiagua oil field, close to Yopal.

                  Police blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
                  hemisphere's oldest and largest rebel army, for the abduction.

                  In March, a FARC unit in neighboring Arauca province kidnapped and brutally
                  murdered three U.S. activists, who had been helping U'wa Indians defend
                  their tribal lands from encroachment by multinational oil companies.

                  At least one other American, Daniel Hoffmann, 33, of Chicago, is currently
                  being held by the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group,
                  which hijacked a commercial passenger plane over northern Colombia a
                  month ago and is still holding 25 passengers and crew.

                  An ELN commando in southwest Cauca province released a Swiss woman
                  and an Israeli Friday after abducting them more than two weeks ago. The
                  victims denied any ransom had been paid.

                  Colombia's estimated 20,000 guerrillas often kidnap civilians as a way of
                  raising "war taxes" to finance their three-decade-old uprising to topple the
                  state and usher in a socialist regime.

                  In a separate incident early Saturday, a 150-strong column of FARC fighters
                  raided the town of Pore, also in Casanare, killing one policeman and injuring
                  three others, authorities said.

                     Copyright 1999 Reuters.