Eight Colombian soldiers killed in landmine ambush

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Eight Colombian soldiers were killed when their patrol walked into a guerrilla landmine ambush, an increasingly popular tactic for leftist rebels being driven back by the military, the army said on Wednesday.

Gen. Guillermo Quinonez said the attack on Tuesday also wounded five soldiers while the patrol was tracking guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in southern Meta province.

The region is used by illegal armed groups to grow coca leaf used in the manufacture of cocaine.

"There was a series of blasts from a large amount of improvised explosives set up across a strategic area," Quinonez told Caracol radio.

Colombia has one of the highest number of landmine victims in the world, most of them members of the armed forces fighting against Latin America's longest-running leftist insurgency.

Rebel landmines are often simple and hard to detect, such as an explosive charge jammed inside a beer bottle with a detonator fashioned out of a medical syringe.

Aided by billions of dollars in U.S. aid, President Alvaro Uribe has pushed the FARC rebels into remote rural areas and the four-decade-old conflict has eased. But FARC is still a potent force in areas where the state's presence remains weak.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey; Editing by John O'Callaghan)