8 FARC rebels, 4 soldiers die in fighting in Colombia

Bogota, Agency
At least eight FARC guerrillas and four soldiers were killed in fighting over the weekend in a rural area outside Fortul, a town in the eastern Colombian province of Arauca, the army said.

Troops from the 18th Brigade engaged rebels from the 10th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, on Sunday, the army said.

The soldiers pursued the guerrillas, "who took the bodies of those who died in combat with them, of which two have been recovered as of now," the army said.

The FARC also detonated a car bomb Sunday on a highway in the same rural area, known as Tamacay, wounding the driver of a passing vehicle.

A FARC 10th Front fighter was killed and a rebel finance chief was captured Saturday in Arauca.

The two men opened fire on 18th Brigade troops on patrol in a rural area outside Puerto Rondon.

The Colombian government has made fighting the FARC a top priority and has obtained billions in U.S. aid for counterinsurgency operations.

FARC military chief Jorge Briceño, known as "Mono Jojoy," was killed in a military operation on Sept. 22 in a jungle area near La Macarena.

Several guerrillas who made up the security ring of the military chief - Colombia's most-wanted man along with the FARC's top leader, Alfonso Cano - were also killed in the airstrike.

Even prior to Mono Jojoy's death, the FARC, which has seen its numbers fall by more than half in recent years to roughly 8,000 fighters, had suffered a series of setbacks.

On July 2, 2008, the Colombian army rescued former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, U.S. military contractors Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves, and 11 other Colombian police officers and soldiers.

The FARC had been trying to trade the 15 captives, along with 25 other "exchangeables," for hundreds of jailed guerrillas.

The rebels' most valuable bargaining chip was Betancourt, a dual Colombian-French citizen the FARC seized in February 2002 whose plight became a cause celebre in Europe.

The guerrilla group is believed to still be holding some 700 hostages.

FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, who was known as "Sureshot," died on March 26, 2008.

Three weeks earlier, Colombian forces staged a cross-border raid into Ecuador, killing FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes and setting off a regional diplomatic crisis.

Ivan Rios, a high-level FARC commander, was killed that same month by one of his own men, who cut off the guerrilla leader's hand and presented it to army troops, along with identification documents, as proof that the rebel chief was dead.

The FARC, which has fought a succession of Colombian governments for decades, is on both the U.S. and EU lists of foreign terrorist organizations.

Drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom are the FARC's main means of financing its operations.