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    November 05, 2011

Colombia Kills Top FARC Leader

   Alfonso Cano killed Friday in military raid

   VOA News
   Photo: Ejército de Colombia

   Colombian military officials say their forces have killed the top
   leader of the country's main leftist rebel group.
   Authorities say Alfonso Cano, the top commander of the Revolutionary
   Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was killed Friday during a military
   raid.
   Cano became the leader of the rebel group in 2008 after the death of
   Manuel Marulanda Velez, the group's founder.
   Cano, whose real name is Guillermo Saenz Vargas, was born into a
   middle-class family. His father was an agronomist and his mother was a
   teacher. He studied anthropology at Bogota's National University before
   joining the Communist Party. He is believed to have joined FARC in the
   1970s.
   FARC rebels have been at war with the Colombian government since the
   1960s. While most of the group's funding comes from cocaine trafficking
   and extortion, the leftist rebels are believed to be holding an unknown
   number of people for ransom or political leverage.
   FARC has been designated as a terrorist organization by Colombia, the
   United States and the European Union.

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