guerrillas who surrender and free hostages. Last month, two guerrillas fled their camp deep in the jungles of southern Colombia, bringing along two captives, a 14-year-old boy and a male adult who were kidnapped in December. And a July rescue operation freed former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who had been held captive since 2002, along with three American military contractors and 11 Colombian police and military members. The government has said the FARC's military force has been severely compromised in recent months, but authorities still accuse it of trafficking huge quantities of cocaine to finance its decades-old insurgency. Security analysts said FARC, established in the early 1960s, has about 9,000 to 12,000 armed guerillas and several thousand supporters, mostly in rural areas. The guerrilla group operates mostly in Colombia but has carried out extortion, kidnappings and other activities in Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, analysts say.