BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) – Top Colombian rebel commander Mono Jojoy has been killed in a military raid on his jungle camp in one of the biggest blows against Latin America’s oldest insurgency, the government said yesterday.
The strike is a political and military victory for President Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister who came to office in August vowing to keep up a hard line with the guerrillas and reduce violence from the country’s waning war. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is at its weakest in decades after eight years of a US-backed security campaign to hunt down rebel chieftains and drive guerrillas back into remote jungles and mountains.
“The symbol of terrorism in Colombia has fallen,” Santos said in New York where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly. “To the rest of the FARC, we are coming after you, we are not going to let down our guard.”
The loss of Mono Jojoy, the FARC’s military chief who was also known as Jorge Suarez Briceno, will be a severe strike at the rebel’s strategic capacity. But guerrilla units can rely on bombs and ambushes to harry troops and remain a threat in rural areas where state presence is still weak.
Jojoy was killed in an air strike involving more than 30 aircraft and helicopters. As many as 20 other rebels were killed in the operation in the Macarena region, one of the FARC’s last strongholds.
His hidden camp was a warren of tunnels including a concrete bunker to protect the rebel chief from air strikes, Colombia’s defence minister told reporters.
Mono Jojoy, known for his trademark black beret and thick mustache, was a member of the FARC’s seven-member secretariat.
