Colombian troops killed top rebel military chief Mono Jojoy in a raid on his jungle camp, striking a major blow against Latin America’s oldest insurgency, the government said on Thursday.
The operation was a political and military victory for President Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense minister who took office las month vowing to keep up a hard line with the guerrillas and reduce violence from the waning war.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is at its weakest in decades after eight years of a US-backed security campaign to hunt down rebel chiefs and drive guerrillas back into remote jungles and mountains.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The loss of Mono Jojoy, the FARC’s veteran military boss also known as Jorge Suarez Briceno, is unlikely to end Colombia’s long war, but it will restrict the group’s ability to carry out strategic attacks as they turn increasingly to hit-and-run tactics and protecting their commanders.
“This is the beginning of the end of 40 years of war in Colombia,” Santos said in New York, where he was attending the annual UN General Assembly meetings. He compared Jojoy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Jojoy, 59, was killed in an air strike and ground raid involving more than 30 planes and 25 helicopters, the army said. As many as 20 other rebels were killed in the operation in the Macarena region, one of the FARC’s last strongholds.
The rebel leader’s hidden camp was a warren of tunnels including a concrete bunker to protect him from air strikes, Colombia’s defense minister told reporters.
The military retrieved 14 computers and 60 USB storage devices from the bunker, which could aid further military efforts against the FARC, Santos said.
Urban attacks, bombings and kidnappings have dropped sharply in recent years and the FARC now largely resorts to ambushes, improvised landmines and home-made mortars to attack army and police patrols rather than engaging troops directly.
However, suspected FARC rebels on Thursday assaulted part of Colombia’s largest coal mine, Cerrejon, intimidating workers and destroying vehicles in a rare attack on a foreign company.
The mine, operated by BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata, reported no major damage and said operations were normal.
Jojoy, known for his trademark black beret and thick mustache, was a member of the FARC’s seven-member secretariat. A military expert, he was outranked only by Alfonso Cano, the top FARC commander who the army says it is close to capturing.
The FARC’s founder, Manuel Marulanda, died in 2008, and two other senior commanders were killed that year. Once a force of 17,000 fighters, desertions have thinned its ranks to around 8,000. Many units are now engaged in cocaine trafficking.
For Santos, Jojoy’s death was good news as he seeks to consolidate security gains and push through reforms, including an overhaul of oil royalties, the health system and fiscal regulations.
A White House spokesman called Jojoy’s death “an important victory for Colombia” and said US President Barack Obama would discuss it with Santos when during their scheduled meeting yesterday in New York.
“Although the FARC may try to respond with further attacks, Jojoy’s death further underlines how the FARC has now passed a point of no return that will see it decompose further into smaller, local outfits,” said Robert Monks, a senior analyst with IHS Jane’s consultancy.
Jojoy spent more than three decades in the FARC and was an avid student of military strategy. He was accused of directing some of the group’s most deadly and high-profile operations. He masterminded the kidnapping of three US contractors who were later rescued in a military raid in 2008.
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