BOGOTA, March 7 (Reuters) - Colombian rebel leader Ivan Rios was killed this week by his own men, not in combat with security forces, as the army originally reported, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday.

Rios, the youngest man on the seven-member secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and considered key to the group's future, was shot dead in Colombia's northwestern coffee-producing region.

Six days earlier Colombian forces had sparked a diplomatic crisis by raiding Ecuadorean territory and killing the FARC's No. 2 leader Raul Reyes. The incident threatened to escalate into South America's first conventional war in more than a decade. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein, editing by Jackie Frank)

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