Farc Leader Cano Killed In Military Attack

The head of Colombia's main rebel group, the Farc, has been killed in a military bombing, the defence ministry has said.

Alfonso Cano, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), had been the country's top target since September 2010, when the group's military chief was killed.

The government offered up to \$3.7m (£2.3m) for information that would lead to his capture.

"The fingerprints matched," said one senior security official who confirmed the death, adding that the 63-year-old was killed in "a standard military operation" in Cauca state in which ground troops also participated.

His killing is the latest in a series of withering blows to Latin America's last remaining leftist rebel army that began in March 2008, when the Farc's foreign minister, Raul Reyes, was killed in a bombing across the border in Ecuador.

That same month, the Farc's revered co-founder, Manuel Marulanda, died in a mountain hideout of a heart attack. He was believed to be 78.

Late last year government forces killed top commander Mono Jojoy in a bombardment and assault on his camp.

Cano's death is a strategic victory for President Juan Manuel Santos who came to office last year promising to keep up a hard-line stance against the guerrillas.

The group is on a US list of terrorist organisations and the military campaign, which began in 2002, has been backed by the American administration.

Alfredo Rangel, an independent security analyst, said: "There's no leader with the intensity that Cano has and it will be hard to get someone to replace him. In the short term there will be a lack of leadership.

"The end won't be automatic or immediate but we are coming to the end of the Farc."

Cano went from being a middle-class youth in the capital Bogota to the top Farc leader after taking part in peace talks in neighbouring Venezuela and Mexico during the 1990s.

Once a powerful force controlling large swathes of Colombia, the Farc is now considered to be at its weakest in decades.