“Alfonso Cano,” the supreme leader of guerrilla group FARC, only just escaped an attack on his camp carried out by Colombian armed forces, the country’s President Juan Manuel Santos said Sunday.
According to the President, Colombian armed forces had bombed the camp where the FARC leader was hiding. Ground troops that entered the site found Cano’s clothes and his dogs, Santos said.
“Cano did not die Thursday, but he will soon,” the President said immediately after arriving from Chaparral, a town in the south of the Tolima department, a few miles from where the armed forces say they bombed the FARC camp in operations that began Tuesday.
According to Santos, the FARC leader’s location was made known to authorities “by his own men.”
The attack on Cano’s camp had sparked rumors about the death of the guerrilla leader earlier Sunday.
In September last year, Santos also announced that Colombian armed forces had almost killed Cano and in February this year rumors surged that the supreme FARC leader had died. “We are waiting for a mistake by Cano,” said Santos.