The leader of Latin America’s largest and longest-surviving insurgency group, Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, has died from a heart attack, it has been announced, raising hopes in Colombia that a 44-year-old civil war which has claimed 200,000 lives may finally be drawing to an end.

A senior commander of Farc, the acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Timochenko confirmed the news yesterday to a Venezuelan TV channel that Marulanda had died “in the arms of his companion, surrounded by his bodyguards”.

The Colombian defence ministry broke the news first, quoting 'reliable' intelligence sources. The death of Marulanda, who was either 78 or 80 years old, has been claimed at least 17 times over the course of the last four decades.

Timochenko said that the leadership of Farc, which has been seriously weakened in recent months by the deaths of its second-in-command and other leaders as well as the surrender of an iconic woman fighter, has passed to Alfonso Cano, the group’s chief ideologue.

“Our commander in Chief Manuel Marandula Veléz died of a heart attack. We have buried him with the honours a leader of his size deserves, ” said Timochenko, whose real name is Timoléon Jiménez.

The Colombian army has said for months that it has Cano cornered in the southwest Colombian jungle and that his death or capture is imminent. Farc statements have denied Cano is in the area.

Marulanda, whose real name was Pedro Marín, founded Farc with 48 farmers, turning it into a formidable peasant army which has fought government forces and rival right-wing paramilitary “self-defence” groups for decades, reducing vast areas of Colombia into no-go zones.

Marulanda was a rigid Marxist who had never set foot in the capital Bogota let alone travelled abroad. The Farc currently holds an estimated 750 people hostage, including US citizens and Colombian politicians, the highest profile of whom is Ingrid Betancourt, a French passport-holder who was running for the Colombian presidency when she was kidnapped six years ago.

Hopes are how high that with Marulanda’s demise a more pragmatic leadership, worn down by losses which have seen its numbers halved, will be prepared to sue for peace and release the hostages.

Sensing the moment, President Alvaro Uribe said in a live TV broadcast that Farc leaders who freed their captives could be turned over to the authorities in France, "so that they enjoy that freedom there."

He also reiterated pledges to reward surrendering rebels with up to a total of 100 million dollars.

Uribe made his speech in the town of Florida, in an 800-square-mile zone in the southwest which the Farc has asked to be demilitarized in order to negotiate a swap of high-profile hostages for jailed guerrillas.

A farmer's son, Marulanda took up arms in 1949 after right-wing henchmen of the Conservative Party began slaughtering supporters of the peasant-backed Liberal Party.

He founded the Farc in 1964, after government troops overran the agrarian enclave he and other communist refugees called home. He earned the nickname “Tirofijo” or “Sureshot” for his skill with a rifle in ambushing army patrols. He was considered a master of guerrilla warfare and an avid student of military history. The father of seven children, he is not known to have ever married.

He gained international fame when the government withdrew troops from a Switzerland-size area of southern Colombia in late 1998 in exchange for peace talks. The negotiations collapsed in February 2002 as it emerged that Farc was using the territory to receive weapons training from the Provisional IRA.

Three months later Colombians elected Uribe, who has made defeating the Farc the cornerstone of his administration with the help of billions of dollars in US aid.

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