Top Colombian drug lord, wanted by US, killed in combat

One of Colombia’s most-hunted drug traffickers, Victor Navarro, has been killed in combat.

President Juan Manuel Santos congratulated his armed forces for killing cocaine warlord Victor Navarro, for whom the US had been offering a $5m (€4.4m) bounty.

The 39-year-old, better known by his alias Megateo, died during a military raid in the historically lawless Catatumbo region near Venezuela.

Megateo had claimed to lead a holdout faction of a leftist rebel band that disbanded in 1991, but he was believed to have been one of the country’s biggest cocaine traffickers.

His fondness for garish, weapons-themed jewellery and the branding of under-age lovers with a tattoo of his face had drawn comparisons to an earlier generation of drug traffickers in Colombia.