Suspected Marxist rebels have come close to assassinating Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The attack took place as his helicopter flew into a village in the northeast of the country, and suspected FARC militants opened fire with machine guns.
Bullets rattled from jungle-covered mountains as Mr Uribe and his wife approached Granada in Antioquia province around 1 p.m. (7 p.m. Irish time), a presidential spokesman said.
Mr Uribe ordered the helicopter to turn back to the town of Rio Negro. No one was hurt. As Mr Uribe's helicopter retreated, another helicopter fired into the mountains, but there was no confirmation guerrillas had been hit.
Marxist rebels have tried to kill Mr Uribe several times. He had pledged to take tough action against illegal armed groups after taking office last August. The president, whose anti-rebel policies have helped keep his approval rating at over 60 per cent, returned later to Granada but without his wife.
"I had to come back to Granada because I couldn't leave the town abandoned to the armed groups," said Uribe in a speech to a cheering crowd in the main square, which local television showed lined with soldiers to protect him.
Negotiations with the guerrillas were impossible so long as they kept up their fight and financed themselves with drugs, said Mr Uribe.
The event had been scheduled to mark the reconstruction of houses destroyed in 2000 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
The 17,000-strong FARC was born 39 years ago in a peasant uprising. It says it wants socialist reform but admits to funding itself with kidnapping and by "taxing" the cocaine business.