At the end of a day of anguish and frustration, President Alvaro Uribe soberly told Colombians that kidnappers had slit the throat of a southern governor during the country's first major political abduction since he took office in 2002.

The slaying of Caqueta state Gov. Luis Francisco Cuellar underlined the threat still posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia despite years of being battered by the Andean nation's U.S.-backed military. The FARC didn't immediately take responsibility for the kidnapping, but it has a history of staging publicity-grabbing attacks during the Christmas holidays.

"In the midst of pain, we reiterate today all our determination to defeat these terrorists," Uribe said in a televised speech to the nation late Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Cuellar was dragged in his pajamas from his home in Florencia, capital of Caqueta state.

Uribe said senior military officials told him that "because security forces were in pursuit, the terrorists, so as to avoid gunfire, proceeded to cut the throat of the governor." He spoke in a grim monotone, a contrast to his anger earlier in the day.

Cuellar was grabbed by eight to 10 men in military uniforms who killed a police guard and used explosives to blow open the front door to the governor's home about 10 p.m. Monday, Gen. Orlando Paez, operations chief for the national police, told The Associated Press. Two other police guards suffered shrapnel wounds that were not life-threatening.

Uribe said the rebels first ditched and set fire to the pickup truck they had used to carry away the 69-year-old Cuellar.

His body, still clad in pajamas, was found lying at the top of a steep hill on Florencia's outskirts between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Tuesday, said a police official who agreed to discuss the case only if granted anonymity because he wasn't authorized to make public statements. The discovery wasn't revealed by officials for more than six hours.

Earlier Tuesday, an angry Uribe, whose rancher father was slain by leftist rebels in a 1983 botched kidnapping, said he had ordered soldiers and police to rescue Cuellar, also a cattle rancher. Officials said 2,000 police and soldiers had fanned out into the hills around Florencia looking for the kidnappers who took the governor.

Officials also offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to Cuellar's abductors _ and Uribe said in his TV speech that the reward still stood. Colombia has effectively used millions in reward money to secure rebel defections and betrayals.