Junta blames Leftists for massacre

Press, 4 February 1982, Page 6

Junta blames Leftists for massacre

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador Leftist guerrillas battling El Salvador’s Washingtonbacked junta launched a rare daylight attack on Tuesday on the eastern city of Usulutan and claimed control of the north-eastern town of Corinto.

A military source at Usulutan, 110 km east of San Salvador, the country’s capital, said fighting was heavy in at least four sections of the city through the morning. He said that the guerrillas attacked about 6 a.m., killing at least one national policeman and wounding three soldiers. There was no word on guerrilla casualties. In a delayed report the Defence Ministry alleged that guerrillas had made a bloody raid on the northeastern town of Nueva Trinidad, killing 10 soldiers and then massacring between 100-150 of the community’s 260 residents. Colonel Eusebio Soto said the guerrillas entered Nueva Trinidad on Saturday night. After the soldiers were killed the attackers ordered most of the townspeople into the streets and shot them down.

He said the guerrillas suffered some casualties, and forced survivors of the massacre to help them carry away their dead and wounded when they withdrew from the town at dawn on Sunday. He gave no estimate of the guerrilla casualties. Journalists who went to Nueva Trinidad on Tuesday said they saw not more than a dozen corpses still in the streets.

There was speculation that the Defence Ministry might have exaggerated the number of townspeople killed in an effort to counter Leftist allegations of massacres by security forces.