Colombian armed forces have killed a Marxist insurgent commander in an operation aimed at ending his attacks on civilians after he kidnapped and shot dead three Ecuadorean media workers earlier this year, president Ivan Duque said on Friday. The president said Walter Arizala was killed during a “heroic operation” earlier in the day after a months-long, U.S.-backed manhunt that followed the kidnapping and murder of three Ecuadorian press workers in the turbulent border area. Arizala, who was part of the Oliver Sinisterra Front — a faction of the now-defunct Revolutionary Army Forces of Colombia (FARC) — was the subject of a monthslong manhunt after he kidnapped and shot dead three Ecuadorean media workers earlier this year. His small holdout faction of a few dozen guerrillas abandoned the country's 2016 peace process and was accused of drug trafficking, extortion and homicide across Colombia's volatile Narino state, which is home to the country's largest harvest of illegal coca crops. He led a small holdout faction of a few dozen guerrillas from the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that was behind a rising wave of drug-related violence, including the March kidnapping of three newspaper workers from Ecuador’s El Comercio newspaper who were later found slain.
Ecuadorian drug trafficker and FARC dissident Walter Arizala is killed in a joint police and military operation near Tumaco. Arízala was wanted for the murder of two Ecuadorian journalists earlier in the year.