Ecuadorian father denies son was rebel

QUITO, Ecuador (CNN) March 24 -- A day after a Colombian official identified one of the people killed by a Colombian military strike on a rebel camp in this country as Ecuadorian, the dead man's father denied his son was a member of the rebel group.

Guillermo Aisalia said his 38-year-old son Franklin, who was killed in the March 1 attack, was not the man seen standing next to two rebels in a picture distributed by the Colombian military.

"I've never met that man," Aisalia told reporters Monday in Quito.

Attorney General Alfredo Alvear said that fingerprint tests confirmed the body, which has been taken to Bogota from the rebel camp, was Aisalia's.

Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos on Sunday confirmed the military raid that killed about two dozen Colombian rebels in Ecuadorian territory also killed a citizen of Ecuador.

On Saturday, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa had warned that it would be an "extremely grave" development to learn if foreign troops were responsible for the "murder" of an Ecuadorian citizen.

"When it is confirmed, we will take appropriate action," the president said in a statement on his Web site.

Ecuador cut diplomatic relations with Colombia after Colombian soldiers and police bombed a camp inside Ecuadorian territory March 1. The attack also killed Raul Reyes, the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Colombia called it the most significant blow to the leftist group in more than 40 years of warfare.

The action provoked a diplomatic crisis as two of Colombia's neighbors -- Ecuador and Venezuela -- moved troops toward their borders with Colombia. Yet the crisis largely defused when the presidents of the three nations met and shook hands a few days later in the capital of the Dominican Republic.

Ecuador and Venezuela condemned the raid and all three countries affirmed that no country has the right to violate the territory of another.

Ecuador has not re-established diplomatic ties with Colombia, and tension mounted in recent days as the family of Franklin Aisalia suspected that he was killed in the raid.

The Colombian government initially identified his body as that of a FARC rebel.