("Jhon" is correct in fifth paragraph)

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA, May 18 (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe ordered the military on Friday to hunt for a French-Colombian national and three Americans held by leftist guerrillas after a fellow hostage who escaped said he saw them just weeks ago.

The army will track down Ingrid Betancourt and the U.S. contract workers held in the jungle for years with hundreds of other kidnap victims, Uribe said, accusing the FARC of keeping hostages in hide-outs worse than concentration camps.

"Generals, we are going to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, we are not going to play about with these bandits," Uribe said at a public event, shaking his fist.

"And the U.S. Congress should have no doubt, because we are going to carry out a military rescue of the three North Americans held by the FARC," he said.

The news from the escaped police officer, Jhon Frank Pinchao was the first concrete detail about Betancourt and the three Americans since rebels released videos of them in 2003.

The FARC -- the Spanish initials for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- captured Betancourt in a southern province in 2002 while she was campaigning for president.

Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell were captured in 2003 after their surveillance plane crashed while spotting coca crops used to make cocaine. Rebels shot another American and a Colombian who were also on the aircraft.

The FARC, fighting a four-decade conflict fueled by the cocaine trade, has often kidnapped police, soldiers and politicians for ransom or for political leverage in talks with the government.

"The FARC concentration camps are crueler than the concentration camps of the Nazis," Uribe said.

Pinchao, who escaped last month from a FARC hostage camp after nine years in captivity, said on Wednesday that he was held with Betancourt and the three men in a group of 13 victims. They were moved from camp to camp every few months.

Pinchao slipped chains the guerrillas used to hold prisoners and fled for more than two weeks through the jungle before he was found by a police patrol at the end of April.

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