Bogota: Colombia`s FARC guerrillas said Wednesday that a member of their delegation at peace talks with the government was among the 27 rebels killed last week in an air strike.
FARC commander Pastor Alape said his comrade in arms Jairo Martinez was "among the guerrillas murdered" in the strike on Thursday on the western rebel stronghold of Cauca, which has threatened to derail the peace process aimed at ending the five-decade conflict.
Alape also confirmed that rebel commander Roman Ruiz, a member of the FARC`s high command, was killed on Sunday in another strike in the northwestern department of Choco.
The two rebel commanders` deaths will amplify the tensions that have beset the peace talks in Havana since the FARC killed 11 soldiers last month in an ambush in Cauca.
The attack came amid a unilateral ceasefire declared by the FARC, and caused a furious President Juan Manuel Santos to order the resumption of air strikes on the guerrillas.
In all, some 40 FARC fighters have been killed in three separate strikes since Thursday.
The Cauca strike prompted the rebels to call off their ceasefire, raising fears for the two-year-old peace talks in Havana -- though the two sides resumed negotiations Monday despite the heightened tensions.
Alape said Martinez had been in Cauca on an "educational peace mission."
Members of the rebels` negotiating team have often travelled back to Colombia to report on the talks to their comrades on the ground.
Alape called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to oversee an autopsy on the killed rebels. He alleged some of them were shot execution-style by ground forces in the wake of the air strikes.
