QUITO, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Colombian villagers escaping combat have fled across into Ecuador during the last week in what aid workers called a "significant" displacement along the troubled frontier, the United Nations said on Friday.

U.N. refugee agency workers in Ecuador received more than 500 people who escaped from Colombia's Narino province, where the armed forces face leftist guerrillas and paramilitaries battling over key cocaine smuggling routes.

"This is the most significant displacement we have had so far this year," Marta Juarez, the UNCHR refugee agency representative, told a local radio station. "It's very likely more will continue to arrive in the next hours."

Colombia's armed conflict, which has caused more than 40,000 deaths since 1990, has ebbed under President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security campaign, but more than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting.

Ecuador is home to more than 250,000 refugees, mostly from Colombia, making it Latin America's largest recipient of displaced people, the United Nations says.

Venezuela and Ecuador have often clashed with Bogota over the violent spillover from Colombia's guerrilla conflict and left-wing leaders in Quito and Caracas have criticized the U.S. campaign to counter drug trafficking in the Andean region.

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