Suspected Marxist rebels opened fire with machine guns on Sunday as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's helicopter flew into a village in the northeast of the country, his spokesman said.
Bullets rattled from jungle-covered mountains as Uribe and his wife Lina approached Granada in Antioquia province around 1pm local time (1800 GMT), presidential spokesman Ricardo Galan said.
Uribe ordered the helicopter to turn back to the town of Rio Negro. No one was hurt.
Marxist rebels have tried to kill Uribe several times but this was one of the closest shaves for the US ally since he took office last August promising tough action against illegal armed groups.
As Uribe's helicopter retreated, another helicopter fired into the forested mountains overlooking the town, but there was no confirmation guerrillas had been hit.
The president, whose anti-rebel policies have helped keep his approval rating at over 60 percent, returned later on Sunday 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 Uribe, wearing a Panama hat and a Colombian poncho.
The event had been scheduled to mark the reconstruction of houses destroyed in 2000 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
Uribe's defense policy is based on bolstering security in towns and villages throughout Colombia's difficult geography of mountains and jungle. But his habit, unprecedented for a Colombian president in recent history, of regularly visiting remote and sometimes dangerous places is a permanent source of worry for his aides.
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