Chile Colonel Kidnaped by 10 Gunmen

Suspected leftists disguised as water works employees kidnaped an army colonel today outside his Santiago home, wounding a policeman in an exchange of gunfire during their escape, officials and radio reports said.

A three-paragraph communique issued by army headquarters in Santiago identified the kidnap victim as Lt. Col. Carlos Carreno.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction, but the army blamed “Marxist subversive aggression.”

Carreno was abducted at about 7:15 a.m. by at least 10 people, some of whom had posed as water works employees working on a storm drain near the officer’s home, Santiago radio stations reported.

Car Runs Into Police

As Carreno left his house this morning, apparently headed for work at an army weapons factory, he was grabbed by members of the group who shoved him into a car and drove off, the reports said.

Several blocks away the group confronted a uniformed patrol of the national police and there was an exchange of gunfire, the radio reports said. One policeman was wounded and another was injured when a police jeep struck a bus and overturned, the radio reports and the government-run news agency Orbe said.

Last August, guerrillas from the leftist Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, the group that took responsibility for an attempt on the life of President Augusto Pinochet one month later, seized a colonel who was freed after three days.