Mastermind of Drug Cartel Terror Slain in Medellin

Police delivered another blow to the powerful Medellin cocaine cartel by killing the man who masterminded a 10-month-old terror campaign that has killed hundreds of people, police said Thursday.

Hours after police killed the drug chieftain during a shoot-out Wednesday night in an exclusive Medellin suburb, a car bomb exploded near a police station in the same area Thursday.

The blast killed four people, including two suspected terrorists inside the car, and injured 43, a police spokeswoman said.

The bomb may have been in retaliation for the police killing of Juan Jairo Arias Tascon, who officials said led the Medellin cocaine cartel’s vast network of hired killers.

Members of Colombia’s Elite Police Corps, a group specially trained to fight drug traffickers, were tipped off about Arias’ whereabouts and tried to arrest him at a Medellin apartment, the spokeswoman said. Arias resisted arrest, and police shot and killed him, she added.

A woman and a 6-month-old baby were also in the apartment but no one else was harmed in the shooting, the spokeswoman said.

The national police director, Gen. Octavio Vargas, told a local radio network that Arias’ killing represented the government’s second most important victory in its war on drugs.

“He served as chief of the armed organization of the Medellin cartel,” Vargas said.

The most important victory came in December when the Elite Corps killed Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, the Medellin cartel’s No. 2 boss.

T Vargas said that Arias, 28, was the Medellin cartel’s fifth most important leader. The police director blamed him for the murders of an attorney general, a state governor, a judge and a leading journalist.

Vargas said that Arias was responsible for two car bomb attacks against Colombia’s security police chief, Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez. Those blasts killed at least 70 people, but Maza was not harmed.

The Medellin cartel’s campaign to murder police officers continued Wednesday, when four more law officers were slain.

The cartel said in a statement Tuesday that it is killing police officers to avenge the “tortures and murders” by police of its associates in Medellin.

In April, drug traffickers offered to pay $4,300 to anyone willing to kill a policeman. So far this year, 110 law officers have been assassinated in Medellin, police say.

Officials blame drug traffickers for killing about 400 people since last August, when the government of President Virgilio Barco Vargas began its a sweeping drug crackdown that is still under way.

The cartel’s leader, Pablo Escobar, remains at large despite a massive manhunt to find him.