Police chief shot dead by gunmen in Colombia

Gunmen on motorcycles killed the designated Colombian chief of secret police as he drove his car in Medellin, the capital of a province notorious as the centre of Pablo Escobar's murderous cocaine cartel in the Eighties and Nineties.

Fernando Mancilla, the province's prosecutor in the Escobar era, had just been appointed head of the secret police, known as the DAS, for Antioquia province.

Gunmen on the pillions of two motorcycles fired repeatedly at his red Mazda in a residential neighbourhood during Thursday morning's rush hour, witnesses said.

The Medellin cartel has faded into history, but drug traffickers, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces have a strong presence in the province. On Thursday, 80 alleged urban fighters with two rebel groups were captured by police.