Colombia says kills top rebel commander

BOGOTA, Sept 3 (Reuters) A Colombian guerrilla leader wanted by the United States for drug trafficking was killed in a military attack on his base in a major blow to Latin America's oldest insurgency, authorities said today.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Tomas Medina, known as ''El Negro Acacio'' and a senior commander in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was killed along with 16 other guerrillas in a weekend bombardment of his jungle camp.

''This is without a doubt the severest blow to the FARC's logistics,'' Santos told reporters. ''We have intelligence sources that show alias El Negro Acacio was killed.'' Under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's armed forces have pushed the FARC back into the jungles and violence from the 40-year conflict has eased. But the rebels are still a potent force -- 11 soldiers were killed in an ambush at the weekend.

Aided by billions in US military aid, Uribe has promised to defeat the FARC, which began as a peasant army in the 1960s fighting for a socialist state, but which is now engaged in the country's huge cocaine trafficking trade.

Medina has been accused of working with a top Brazilian drug trafficker, who was captured in southern Colombia in 2001 and deported back to Brazil.

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