Colombia's FARC Rebels Execute Four Hostages

Colombia's FARC rebels have executed four hostages, just days after installing a new leader at the helm of Latin America's longest-running insurgent group, the defense minister said Saturday.

"Four hostages, members of the security forces, have been killed," Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon told a press conference, adding that their bullet-ridden bodies had been found on Saturday morning in the Solano region.

In his first message since taking over as leader of Colombia's main leftist guerrilla outfit, new FARC chief Timoleon Jimenez warned President Juan Manuel Santos on Sunday: "We all have to die."

Alfonso Cano, who had led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) since 2008, was gunned down in a November 4 firefight with Colombian government forces.

Santos said Thursday in Bogota that Jimenez, alias Timochenko, would share Cano's fate unless he gave his actions serious thought.

The FARC, believed to have 8,000 members, has been at war with the government since 1964. It began a campaign of kidnappings in the mid-1980s, seizing army hostages to serve as bargaining chips forFARC prisoners. By the late 1990s, civilians and political leaders were also being snatched, winning the group greater notoriety.

Saturday's executions leave 14 police and soldiers still in FARC hands. Some of them have spent more than a decade in captivity.

The operation to kill Cano was the latest in a string of recent military victories in the government's quest to eradicate FARC, after years of unsuccessful attempts to find a negotiated solution.

The FARC lost its number two Raul Reyes during a Colombian army raid in Ecuadoran territory in 2008.

That same year, the FARC also lost Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda Velez, the reclusive 80-year-old rebel chief, who was last seen in 1982. He died after a brief undisclosed illness.