Colombia’s president says dissident rebel leader injured

BOGOTA – Colombia’s President Ivan Duque said the nation’s most-wanted criminal fugitive has been injured in combat along the border with Ecuador.

Walter Artizala is better known by his alias Guacho. He leads a holdout faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that didn’t lay down its weapons as part of a 2016 peace deal.

The group funds itself by drug trafficking and was behind the kidnapping earlier this year of three Ecuadorean press workers who were killed in captivity.

Duque said Saturday that the military was trying to access the location where fighting took place and hoped to provide more details in the coming hours.

He did not expound on Artizala’s injuries.