By IANS,
Bogota : One of the top leaders of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, accused of staging numerous attacks on the police, has been killed in the northern province of Sucre, Spain’s EFE news agency reported Tuesday.
Antonio Lopera Usuga, second-in-command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)’s 35th Front, was killed Monday in a gunfight with the government forces in the northern province of Sucre, Col. Cesar Augusto Cardona said.
Officials said a so-called squadron leader of the FARC was also killed Monday in clashes with the army in southern Colombia.
Lopera Usuga was accused of killing three farmers and attacking several police stations as well as a destroying a power grid in the region.
Two rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN), country’s second largest leftist insurgency group, were killed in the eastern province of Arauca, while two FARC guerrillas were killed in the southern province of Tolima, over the weekend in separate incidents, officials said.
President Alvaro Uribe’s administration has made fighting the FARC a top priority and has obtained billions of dollars in aid from the US for counterinsurgency operations.
The US and the European Union have listed the FARC as a foreign terrorist organisation.