LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivian officials were investigating Friday who financed a plot to assassinate President Evo Morales and what an international group of alleged mercenaries - including two fighters from the Balkan wars - were doing in Bolivia.Among three men killed and two arrested in a dramatic police shootout in the opposition bastion of Santa Cruz, at least two suspects fought for Croatian independence, according to government officials.
Bolivian police closed in on the group Thursday in the eastern city, sparking a dramatic gun battle as the suspects fled to a downtown hotel and blew out its windows with a grenade.
Police commander General Victor Hugo Escobar identified the dead ringleader of the band as 49-year-old Eduardo Rosza Flores, son of a Hungarian father and Bolivian mother.
Rosza commanded a brigade in the Balkans after arriving there as a war correspondent in 1991, according this his personal Web blog.
The firefight with police also killed Magyarosi Arpak, a Romanian sniper, and Michel Martin Dwyer, an Irish expert in martial arts and weapons, the police commander said.
Police arrested Mario Francisco Tadik Astorga, 58, a Bolivian-Croatian who also fought in the Balkans, and Elot Toazo, a Hungarian computer science expert.