The World - News from Sept. 2, 1987

Suspected leftist rebels posing as water company workers kidnaped a Chilean army colonel, an expert in weapons production, at gunpoint in Santiago. A man who said he was a spokesman for an armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party claimed that the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front was responsible for the kidnaping of Col. Carlos Carreno. The Chilean army condemned the “cowardly act of Marxist subversion” and mounted a massive search. The abduction was similar to last year’s seizure of Col. Mario Haeberle, a former intelligence officer held for three days by the front as part of its armed insurgency against President Augusto Pinochet’s 14-year-old military regime.