COLOMBIA: Colombian army kill top FARC leader

Colombian military kill major rebel leader in a raid on his camp. Seventeen other rebels also die. Colombian troops have killed a top guerrilla commander in a fight at his camp. The man, known as Martin Caballero, died along with 17 other members of FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, during a military raid on his base near the Caribbean coast. Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told a news conference Cabellero was cruel but also intelligent and skilled "so much that he was considered indestructible by the people". "There was a myth around Martin Caballero, that no one could catch him" said Santos, adding that the army commander told him more than 200 operations were organized to try and catch him. The strike hits at the structure of FARC, which has been weakened by President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security crackdown against Latin America's longest-running guerrilla insurgency. Under Uribe, Colombia's armed forces have driven the rebels back into the jungles. Violence, bombings and kidnappings from the 40-year conflict have eased, but FARC is still a potent force in remote rural areas.

ITN Source | October 26, 2007

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