Bogota  - Colombian rebels shot dead five people on Christmas day as they were driving to their country house, local media reported Friday quoting police in the northeastern province of Arauca.

Police suspected the killings to be the work of the National Liberation Army or ELN. One of the victims was a former ELN member and had recently entered a government rehabilitation programme, said regional police chief Luis Antonio Ortiz.

Four of the victims were from the same family, while the fifth was a friend travelling with them. Two others were injured.

The ELN is smaller than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and both leftist groups are active in Arauca.

Buenos Aires  - There is probably no such thing as a good year for a person who is being held hostage in the jungle, sick, in chains or barefooted among other terrible conditions.

And yet 2008 has seen great developments in the Colombian conflict, even as some 700 hostages remain held by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The current year featured unilateral releases by the rebels and crucial rescues, including that of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the most high-profile hostage held by FARC.

It also saw key developments and changes within FARC as an armed organization, including the death of its founder and second-in- command, that may yet bear fruit in the years to come.

Bogota - In the classic English Christmas tale by Charles Dickens, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge receives visits from ghosts from his past and future whose messages change his life.

With just a week to go before the holiday celebration, ghosts have been spied at a city hall in Colombia, according to a radio report from the South American country.

And while the shadowy figures haven't delivered any messages as of yet, city officials in the provincial capital of Armenia, population 350,000, have asked the church for help.

Geneva - Colombia's Vice President Francisco Calderon defended his country's human rights record on Wednesday, saying crackdowns on drug runners and paramilitary groups continued and "impunity is being reduced."

Speaking after he appeared for a periodic review of his country, under the auspices of the UN's Human Rights Council, Calderon also said he hoped the United States would enter into a free trade deal with Colombia.

Bogota  - Wilson Bueno Largo, a young former member of Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels, left the country late Tuesday bound for exile in France.

Largo, also known as Isaza, gained hero status for freeing a kidnapped Colombian lawmaker, Oscar Tulio Lizcano, 62, whom he dragged to freedom in October, earning a 400,000-dollar reward.

The 28-year-old was accompanied to Paris by another former FARC hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, and his girlfriend, who deserted from the rebels three months earlier.

Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, who was freed by the military in July after eight years as a FARC hostage, proposed the exile to Largo, as a message to other rebels still holding hostages.

Bogota  - A former FARC rebel's planned departure from Colombia to live in asylum in France was stopped at the last moment on Monday after the public prosecutor requested a delay.

Wilson Bueno Largo, alias Isaza, had fled a FARC camp in Colombia in October along with a hostage and was to fly to France with high- profile former hostage Ingrid Bentancourt on Monday.

But prosecutor Mario Iguaran asked for the stay in order to determine whether Isaza was guilty of kidnapping and to wait for a justice decision on his pardoning.