By Patrick Markey
BOGOTA (Reuters) - A top Colombian guerrilla commander waskilled on Saturday in an attack on his jungle camp along thefrontier with Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America'soldest insurgency, the government said.
Raul Reyes was one of the seven members of the leadershipsecretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, orFARC, which U.S. and European officials label acocaine-trafficking terrorist organization.
The death of the top rebel commander is the mostsignificant success in President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backedsecurity campaign against the Marxist-inspired guerrillas whoare still fighting a four-decade-old conflict.
"As a result of this operation 17 guerrillas were killed.Among them was FARC secretariat member Luis Edgar Devia Silva,better known as Raul Reyes," Defense Minister Juan ManuelSantos told reporters in a news conference.
Santos said intelligence had revealed Reyes' movements nearthe frontier. After an air strike by the Colombian military,Colombian troops came under fire from guerrillas hiding inEcuadorean territory and they responded. Reyes was killed inEcuador and his body brought back into Colombia.
Uribe contacted Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa toinform him of the operation. After speaking to his Colombiancounterpart, Correa said he was sending troops to investigatethe incident.
Reyes, a bespectacled and bearded leader, was one of theFARC's top political officers and the group's officialspokesman who often signed rebel statements from the mountainsof Colombia.
Violence from Colombia's conflict has ebbed under Uribe,who has sent troops to retake areas under the control of armedgroups. But the FARC is still potent in remote areas, where itis holding scores of hostages including three U.S. contractworkers and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
In October, Colombian troops backed by war planes killedFARC commander Gustavo Rueda Diaz at a base near the Caribbeancoast and a month earlier killed Tomas Medina, a senior rebelinvolved in arms and drug smuggling near Venezuela.
Started as a peasant army fighting for a socialist state inthe 1960s, authorities say the FARC is now deeply engaged incocaine trafficking to finance its operations.
(Editing by Eric Beech)
