"Bin Laden and his men went right past the U.S. military into the mountains," says a bounty-hunting commander (C. K. Smith), "right near the Pakistani border".
Elite Colombian forces had been hunting the commander, Alfonso Cano, 63, since he took over the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, three years ago, before they killed him near a rebel camp in the remote southwest on Friday.
Elite Colombian forces had been hunting the commander, Alfonso Cano, since he took over the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia three years ago, before they found him near a rebel camp in the remote southwest.
Still, an infusion of fighters will boost an insurgency that has lost huge numbers of mid-level commanders in the past year to NATO special forces.Coalition forces can only press on with their efforts to hunt down insurgent commanders.
A leader article in the Guardian said that a "multinational force, with helicopters and special forces, is now needed to hunt the LRA commanders down".
The joint Afghan-NATO raid last week was hunting a Taliban commander and some of his fighters who had holed up in a home in Logar Province where a wedding had taken place, according to local residents.
Though night raids have proved to be an increasingly effective means for NATO to hunt down Taliban commanders, they have angered Afghans for years, both for their intrusiveness and for the civilian casualties they frequently cause.
The hunt -- which NATO commanders eager to limit the scope of peacekeeping and the risk to their troops were determined to avoid when they were first deployed here in December 1995 -- is for a man who has been stripped of his political power, most of his personal security and his control of black-market enterprises that netted him millions of dollars.
The rescue team had subdued attackers who had pinned down the Rangers, who were themselves hunting a Taliban commander directly responsible for the deaths of US troops, and were departing in their Chinook helicopter when the aircraft was apparently hit, one of the officials said.
Army also stayed in the hunt for its first Commander in Chief's Trophy since 1996.
