Colombian Politician Assassinated : South America: The leftist leader was the second presidential candidate to be killed in less than a year.

BOGOTA, Colombia â€”  A leftist presidential candidate was shot and killed in a crowded Bogota airport this morning by a gunman who was then wounded by the candidate’s bodyguards in a gun battle, police said.

Bernardo Jaramillo, candidate for the leftist Patriotic Union party in the May 27 elections, was hit twice in the chest and died at a Bogota clinic, a nurse in the police clinic told reporters.

The wounded gunman was captured but a police agent said authorities were searching for an accomplice, apparently also wounded. They said they did not know his identity.

Radio reports said two others, a security police agent and a woman bystander, were also wounded in the attack and ensuing battle.

Jaramillo, described by one Patriotic Union member as “the most threatened man in Colombia,� was shot as he entered the domestic terminal in Bogota’s Eldorado International Airport to fly to the Caribbean coast for a vacation.

The politician’s bodyguards responded with automatic weapons and wounded the suspected assassin, identified tentatively as Jairo Restrepo Posada, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, a bodyguard told radio reporters.

Right-wing death squads linked to drug traffickers and members of the army have killed more than 900 members of the 5-year-old Patriotic Union, organized by former members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Front guerrilla group and communist politicians.

Patriotic Union spokesman Boris Cabrera said the gunman “was sitting reading a newspaper and when Jaramillo arrived at the entrance of the airport, he got up and uncovered a . . . submachine gun.�

“There was immediate confusion,� said a newspaper vendor at the airport. “Children, women and men ran at hearing the first shots and sought protection. No one knew what was going on.�

Jaramillo was the second presidential candidate in the May 27 election to be attacked in less than a year.

Liberal Party candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento was killed last Aug. 18 during a surge of violence by drug traffickers, prompting President Virgilio Barco Vargas to declare war on drug lords.