Some 6,000 members of Colombia’s armed forces continue to search for FARC leader “Alfonso Cano” following the guerrilla leader’s alleged close escape on Thursday, local media reported Monday.
Cano is being searched for near Chaparral, a town in the south of the Tolima department where the leader allegedly fled his main camp only hours before an incursion by armed forces.
According to newspaper El Tiempo, there is ongoing fighting in the region between the armed forces and FARC guerrillas.
Area residents have reportedly expressed concern for their safety. Chaparral mayor Ana Maria Pascua told RCN Radio that in response to the army operations, the FARC have increased grenade attacks and the extortion of community leaders in the region.
In respect to the operations, President Juan Manuel Santos stated Sunday that “the instruction is to intensify; the instruction is to persevere; the instruction is to continue with the offensive.”
Santos claimed that the biggest success resulting from the Thursday operation, in which authorities discovered Cano’s clothes and dogs at his camp in El Cañon de las Hermosas, just outside the southern Tolima town, and near the border with both Cauca and Huila, is that the guerrilla head has been pushed out of his “sanctuary.”
“He has not been able to return to what he considered his sanctuary,” said the president, adding that Cano “sooner or later is going to fall, as all of the FARC leaders are going to fall, as they have been falling.”
The current effort is a continuation of a larger operation that has already led to the deaths of various guerrilla leaders, most recently alias “Jeronimo,” according to authorities.
