Colombian rebels suffer crushing blow in sustained military attack

COLOMBIA’S military killed the field marshal and number two commander of the country’s main leftist rebel group in bombing raids, authorities said.

The death of Jorge Briceno, 57, is a huge setback for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been reeling from a decade of attacks by the US-backed military.

President Juan Manuel Santos called it “the most crushing blow against the FARC in its entire history” – more important than the March 2008 bombing raid across the border with Ecuador that killed FARC foreign minister Raul Reyes or the bloodless rescue in mid-2008 that freed former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US contractors without firing a shot.