American, Colombian executed near plane wreckage
Three other Americans missing from U.S. government aircraft
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Soldiers stand guard along a dirt road near where a U.S. government plane is believed to have crashed.
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| CESSNA 208 |
GRAND CARAVAN
Length: 41.6 feet (12.7 meters)
Wingspan: 52.1 feet (15.9 meters)
Range: 1,044 miles (1,679 kilometers)
Cruising speed: 212 mph (341 kilometers per hous)
Source: Cessna
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BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- The executed bodies of two people who had been aboard a U.S. government plane that crashed in southern Colombia have been found a mile from the incinerated craft, U.S. officials said Friday.
The dead men were identified as Janis Thomas, an American who was shot once in the neck, and Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, a member of the Colombian army who was shot once in the chest, said a spokesman for Colombia's attorney general.
They had been with three other Americans aboard a Cessna 208 that suffered mechanical problems and crashed Thursday morning deep in territory controlled by leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The five appear to have survived the crash, in which the plane incinerated, but the two were later killed, the U.S. officials said.
A separate report from the Colombian attorney general said the bodies bore signs of gunshot wounds.
The three other people who were aboard the Cessna are unaccounted for. Two of them appear to have been captured by FARC rebels, the officials said.
The fate of the fifth was unknown.
The Cessna was contracted by the U.S. Defense Department, officials of the U.S. Southern Command told CNN.
It had been on an intelligence mission en route from the capital to Florencia, in Colombia's Caqueta Department, a region known to harbor FARC guerrillas, when it suffered mechanical problems and crash landed, the Colombian armed forces said in a statement.
Colombia's attorney general's office attributed its information to a regional unit of the Colombia Intelligence Brigade.
-- CNN producer Rich Dubroff, journalist Fernando Ramos and Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
