BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombia's state prosecutor is
                  investigating the disappearance and possible murder of at least 32 peasants
                  by far-right paramilitaries in the remote locality of Naya, local television said on
                  Sunday.

                  Investigators have so far confirmed six killings by the paramilitary outlaws, who
                  have accused local peasants in the dirt-poor area of southwestern Colombia of
                  collaborating with leftist rebels, RCN television said.

                  The channel showed images of the body of a adolescent woman being exhumed
                  from a shallow grave. Her throat had been cut and her hands cut off, RCN said.

                  It was not immediately possible to confirm the figure of 32 killings with the
                  prosecutor's office. Colombia's official ombudsman told reporters on Saturday
                  that over 25 people had been killed in Naya by paramilitaries -- who often target
                  peasants they suspect of giving food or other aid to leftist rebels.

                  Colombia is locked in a 37-year-old, three-way war pitting leftist guerrillas against the
                  armed forces and the illegal paramilitaries. About 40,000 people have been killed in
                  fighting in the past 10 years alone, and two million others have been forced to flee their homes.

                  Hundreds of peasants began to flee from the area, which can only be reached by hours
                  on foot or mule, when a squad of several hundred members of the paramilitary United
                  Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, marched in early last week.

                  They told tales of people murdered with knives  and their bodies dumped by the road.

                  RCN showed pictured pictures of abandoned huts, built of wood and on stilts.

                  Region key for cocaine trade

                  The villages around the River Naya near the Pacific Coast about 240 miles (400 km)
                  southwest of the capital, Bogota, are key to controlling the flow of cocaine to the Pacific,
                  local television said, citing army sources.

                  AUC leader Carlos Castano, a former army scout, is fiercely critical of PresidenT
                  Andres Pastrana's attempts to negotiate peace with the guerrillas.

                  Despite public revulsion at the paramilitaries' often brutal methods, their ranks
                  are estimated to have grown ninefold to 8,000 fighters in the past eight years.

                  They are funded by ranchers and businessmen tired of the inability of the armed
                  forces to defeat the rebels. They, like the Marxist rebels of the 17,000-member
                  FARC -- the Spanish initials of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia --
                  draw substantial funds from the massive local cocaine trade.

                  The AUC has been locked in combat in southern Bolivar Province with the FARC
                  and the Cuban-inspired ELN since early March, when the army pulled out of the
                  area. The army has confirmed the deaths of 26 paramilitary and rebel fighters,
                  but refugees from the area say the real figure is higher.

                  The United States is providing $1 billion in mainly military aid for Pastrana's
                  "Plan Colombia" offensive against drugs. But Washington says it wants to stay
                  out of the war.

                     Copyright 2001 Reuters.