Ex-dictator killed in rocket attack

Press, 19 September 1980, Page 5

Ex-dictator killed in rocket attack

I NZPA-Reuter Asuncion The Paraguayan authorities have accused two Argentinians of taking part in the assassination of the former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.

Somoza was gunned down by six people with machineIguns and a bazooka in Asuncion yesterday morning. 14 months to the day after he was forced into exile by popular revolt. The police last night named Hugo Yrurzun and Silvia Hodgers as two of the six and said they belonged to the Argentine People’s Revolutionary Army (E.R.P.), a Marxist guerrilla group active in Argentina in the 19705.

The police originally said they believed Nicaraguans were responsible, but subsequent eye-witness reports tended to point to Argentine involvement. Three assassins had fair hair and spoke with strong Argentine accents while the house used in the ambush was hired in the

name of an Argentine writers’ association, the police said.

The E.R.P. and the betterknown Montoneros were mostly killed, captured or chased out of Argentina, which neighbours Paraguay, by a tough armed forces counter-campaign.

The Paraguayan Government of President Alfredo Stroessner announced a reward of 540.000 for information leading to the capture of the six. It closed all borders and suspended flights to and] from Asuncion Airport. Airport officials said later that] incoming flights were being permitted again.

The killers shot 25 mach-ine-gun bullets into the deposed dictator’s body and also killed his Nicaraguan driver, Cesar Galardo and a Colombian business advisor, Joseph Baitiner. Machine-gun fire from two cars and a bazooka rocket fired from the second floor of a building destroyed Somoza’s limousine in the city

I centre, a few blocks from the palace of the man who welcomed him to Paraguay, President Stroessner.

In Nicaragua thousands of people spilled out onto the. streets when they heard the news, dancing and letting off rockets and fire-crackers. The ruling junta denied all responsibility but declared \ r esterday a “day of national rejoicing.”

Rafael Cordova Rivas, a member of the five-man ruling junta which replaced Somoza, said: “We are Christians but in all sincerity we cannot conceal our joy at the death of an evil man.” Government office workers drank toasts to the dictator’s death in rum. while drivers hooted their car horns. Parties and parades were planned throughout the country.

About 50,000 people died last year in the civil war which led to the overthrow of Somoza, whose family controlled the central American country for 40 years.