By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Assassinations of candidates in Colombia's Oct. 28 local elections have risen far beyond political killings four years ago, the country's main political watchdog said on Friday.

Twenty-five candidates have fallen victim to leftist rebels or criminal gangs that have arisen in place of disbanded far-right paramilitaries, said Colombia's independent Electoral Observation Mission.

A week before the vote, the number of assassinations is already far above the 15 candidates killed in 2003 campaigns for city and town councils, governors and mayors.

The rise in killings is due in part to progress in fighting leftist guerrillas put on the defensive over the last four years by tougher government security policies, said mission member Claudia Lopez.

"In 2003, the guerrillas had more territorial control and in some of those areas they did not allow elections at all," she said. "This year it is easier for them to kill candidates than to try to ban elections outright. Paradoxically, it is a sign of progress."

The government says leftist guerrillas are responsible for about half of this year's political murders.

This Andean country is in a four-decade-old guerrilla war involving Marxist guerrillas and a mosaic of other illegal groups funded by the cocaine trade.

Over 31,000 right-wing militia members have demobilized under a government peace deal offering them reduced jail terms for crimes including massacres, torture and drug smuggling.

But thousands of former paramilitaries have joined new criminal gangs with no ideology and no qualms about using threats, kidnappings and assassinations to intimidate local officials into cutting them in on public contracts.

"Each new generation of crime gang in Colombia is more purely criminal in nature," Lopez said. "They are less political and more interested in drug trafficking and other traditional organized crime type activities."

Colombia's Public Advocates office estimates almost half of the country's nearly 1,100 municipalities are at risk of electoral violence or intimidation.

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