(Adds details in third paragraph.) By Hugh Bronstein BOGOTA, July 11 (Reuters) - Colombian rebels fighting to control cocaine-producing territory shot and killed two local politicians late on Tuesday, part of an increasingly violent campaign against public officials, police said. The country's defense minister flew to the southern jungle town of Doncello to evaluate security after council members Argemiro Medina and Ofelia Betancur were slain in their homes. United Nations human rights investigators said the gunmen arrived simultaneously at the houses of seven of the town's eight council members, five of whom were saved by not being home. Betancur's sister Rosalia Betancur also died of a bullet to the head in the attacks, which followed the assassination last weekend of a small town mayor in the province of Choco, also attributed by the government to the guerrillas. Authorities said the attacks were part of "Plan Pistola," or the "Pistol Plan," under which the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia kills politicians to force extortion payments and cooperation with drug smuggling. Medina and Betancur were the fifth and sixth town council members killed this year by the rebel army, known as the FARC. The government last month accused the group of murdering 11 provincial lawmakers it had held hostage since 2002. "The targeting of political leaders is very serious in part because of the chilling effect it has on society. It is a typical intimidation tactic," said Andrew Hudson, Colombia specialist at New York-based Human Rights First. The guerrillas were organized in the 1960s to overthrow the government and institute communism as a way of closing the wide gap that divides rich and poor in this Andean country. Since the late 1990s they have funded themselves via Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade. Crime rates are down and the economy is growing under the hard-line security policies of President Alvaro Uribe, but criminal bands still control wide swathes of countryside. Thousands are killed, maimed by land mines, kidnapped or displaced in the guerrilla war every year.
