May 24 (Reuters) - The founder and top commander of Colombia's FARC rebel force, Manuel Marulanda, is dead after more than 40 years fighting against the state, according to a high-ranking government source.

Following are some facts about the septuagenarian Communist leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group and Latin America's oldest left-wing insurgency.

* Manuel Marulanda, known as "Sureshot," helped found the Communist-inspired FARC peasant army in the 1960s to fight for land reform and to reduce the gap between rich and poor in the tumultuous Andean nation.

* Some say Marulanda is the world's oldest guerrilla fighter. He has been reported dead so many times that in 1972 Colombian author Arturo Alape wrote a book called "The Deaths of Sureshot."

* The veteran leader was born as Pedro Antonio Marin, possibly in 1930, which would make him 78, although that has been disputed. He changed his name in the 1950s in honor of a Communist militant killed by the police in Bogota.

* Media reports this year that Sureshot was suffering from prostate cancer have not been confirmed. Colombia's defense minister said the fighter may have been killed in a bombing raid or died of a heart attack.

* Funded by the cocaine trade and kidnapping, the FARC is branded a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union. The Marxist guerrillas hold dozens of politicians and soldiers captive, including French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped during her 2002 presidential election campaign, and three Americans snatched in 2003.

* At their peak, the rebels had close to 20,000 fighters and controlled large swathes of Colombia, but they have been severely shaken by President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security campaign. The United States has given Colombia $5.5 billion in mostly military aid over the last seven years.

* The FARC's No. 2 leader, Raul Reyes, was killed in a bombing raid on his camp in Ecuador in March. His death was followed by the assassination days later of another commander of the rebel group, killed by one of his bodyguards. (Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel)

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