A French journalist remained unaccounted for in southern Colombia on Sunday a day after going missing in combat with leftist rebels that claimed the lives of three soldiers and a police officer, authorities said. Romeo Langlois had been accompanying troops on a counterdrug mission in the Caqueta state. The Defense Ministry said via text message on Sunday that four soldiers and a police officer who had been unaccounted for had reappeared, two of them wounded. Langlois, 35, is a freelancer with years of experience in the region on assignment for France 24 television, the all-news network said in a statement. In all, six troops were wounded in "heavy combat" Saturday with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, during an operation by Counternarcotics Battalion No. 1 that destroyed five cocaine processing labs,the Defense Ministry said. A senior police official said the combat occurred on Saturday and that heavy rain in the area after nightfall impeded military operations. France 24 said the group was attacked Saturday morning. We know that it is a dangerous region. We are of course worried, but we trust Romeo, who knows the area well and has a lot of experience. We hope that he is safe and sound," Nahida Nakad, chief international news editor for the network, said in the statement. The French government was in contact with Langlois' family as Colombian authorities searched Sunday for those missing, a French Foreign Ministry official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to ministry policy. Langlois has also written for the daily Le Figaro. His most recent article, published April 20, profiled a former child soldier for the FARC who later deserted. Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders expressed concern about Langlois' disappearance and about the "limited information" available from the scene. "This episode testifies to the individual courage of journalists exposed to maximum risk in exercising their profession," the group, also known by its French acronym RSF, said in a statement. It said that Colombia remains one of South America's most dangerous countries for journalists. The last known instance of a foreign journalist being held by rebels in Colombia was in 2003, when two journalists on assignment for the Los Angeles Times were held for 12 days before being released unharmed. Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.