The commander of the FARC’s 5th Front, “Jacobo Arango,” has been killed by the Colombian air force in northwestern Colombia, local media reported on Thursday night.
The FARC rebel was killed in the Paramillo mountains in the northwestern Antioquia department, together with five other presumed FARC guerrillas, reported radio station Caracol.
Colombia’s minister of defense, Juan Carlos Pinzon, said the killing of Arango was “one of the hardest blows against the FARC in the past months.”
Arango had been a member of the FARC for 34 years and was considered close to the FARC’s killed military commander “Mono Jojoy.”
According to Caracol, Arango was the nephew of alias “Isaias Trujillo,” the current top leader of the FARC’s Northwestern Bloc.
Trujillo is the second cousin of Dario Antonio Usuga David, the leader of Los Urabeños, a neo-paramilitary group based in northern Colombia.