Colombia Kills FARC Leader in Bombing Raid

President hails death of Alfonso Cano as huge blow against rebels
By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 5, 2011 6:24 AM CDT
Colombia Kills FARC Leader in Bombing Raid
FARC's Alfonso Cano in a file photo.   (Getty Images)

The head of Colombia's FARC rebels was killed in a military bombing yesterday, the latest blow to Latin America's last major rebel group, reports the AP. "The fingerprints matched," said a senior official, calling the raid a "standard military operation." President Juan Manuel Santos called the death of Alfonso Cano "the most devastating blow that this group has suffered in its history," notes the BBC. (He used nearly identical language when FARC No. 2 Mono Jojoy was killed last year, also in a bombing raid.)

The 63-year-old Cano was considered an academic ideologue who had found some success in regrouping FARC following a series of crippling blows made by the Colombian government since 2008, according to AP. “While other FARC commanders were talking about blowing up bridges, Cano would be sitting around reading a book,” said the editor of a communist party newspaper in Colombia. (More Colombia stories.)

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