Luis Jaime Acosta and Jack Kimball
BOGOTÁ | Saturday, 5th November 2011 1: 22 am EDT
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's armed forces top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano on Friday in the biggest blow yet to Latin America longest uprising and a triumph for President Juan Manuel Santos killed, the Defense Ministry said.
While unlikely, that a rapid end to almost five decades of war in the Andes nation to bring, will his death further damage of the rebels ability to collect and coordinate the high-profile attacks that it have brought worldwide fame.
There were few immediate details about the killing, which occurred during the fight, an official of the Ministry for.
"It is true that he is dead," he told Reuters.
Before his beheading the FARC or the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, had broken was that of a U.S.-backed military campaign, which in 2002 and the decreasing uprising has lost several other key commanders in the past four years.
"This us closer to victory and peace, so that we can stop killing each other", said Jorge Cordero, 19-year-old soldier in the North of Bogotá
The death of Cano, 63, who took over as head of the rebels after the death of its founder, 2008, was a major strategic victory for Santos, who came into Office last year, to keep an uncompromising stance against the guerrillas promises.
The Government had offered up to $3.7 million for information leading to his capture.
The death of the bespectacled and bearded rebel commander, a former student and Communist Youth Member, followed the killing end last year of one of his main henchmen, Mono-Jojoy, in a bombardment and attack on his camp.
REBELLEN WEAKEST IN DECADES
"It's always hard for them to get over the next years," said Alfredo Rangel, an independent security analyst.
"There is no leader with the intensity, the Cano has and it will be difficult to replace someone around him." In the short term, there is a lack of leadership. "At the end of non-automatic or immediate but we come to the end of the FARC."
Cano went away, a middle-class youth in the capital, Bogota on the Supreme Leader of the FARC after taking part in peace talks in the neighbouring Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990s.
The strike, which killed him underlined how now the leader of the able to attack Colombia's military deep in the mountains and jungle. Once a powerful force is control large swaths of Colombia, the FARC the weakest in decades.
Violence, the bombings and the kidnapping of the conflict have greatly eased, Colombian forces, better intelligence and U.S. education and technology, use the fight to bring the rebels.
Foreign investment in Colombia has increased since the military crackdown in 2002, in particular began oil and mining. But the FARC and other armed groups continue to have a threat in rural areas, where the State presence is weak and trafficking cocaine to the rebels to finance their operations.
Leaves and military operations have cropped rebel ranks about 7,000 fighters, but the FARC has survived for more than 40 years, and has still a cadre of experienced mid-level commanders. Rebels rely increasingly on hit and-run tactics and ambushes in rural areas.
The FARC, whose Rebellen have made incursions into Venezuela and Ecuador at times to escape the Colombian army, are on the US list of terrorist organisations.
(Additional Nelson Bocanegra and Helen Murphy;) Written by Daniel Wallis. (Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Todd Eastham)
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