Rebels in eastern Colombia have detonated a car bomb near an army patrol, killing six soldiers and the civilian driver, the army said.
Another nine soldiers and a civilian were seriously injured in the attack, about 350 kilometres northeast of Bogota, in Arauca province near the Venezuelan border.
The driver may have been forced by the rebels to drive the car bomb into position, the army said.
The attack was in the same area where rebels of the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army kidnapped British reporter Ms Ruth Morris and US photographer Mr Scott Dalton.They were travelling in a taxi along the dangerous rural road between the towns of Saravena and Tame, when they were stopped at a rebel roadblock. Their driver, who was later released, said they had been hooded and taken to a secret guerrilla camp.
This month, a group of some 70 US Special Forces started training local troops in Arauca in counterinsurgency - with the stated goal of curbing frequent rebel attacks on an oil pipeline that serves an oil field operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.
The ELN, as the Cuban-inspired guerrilla group is known, said in a clandestine radio broadcast it was demanding unspecified "political and military conditions" for the release of the two journalists.
The ELN kidnap hundreds of people every year for ransom money to pay for their struggle, which they say is to impose socialist reform.