Salvador guerrillas step up drive to topple Govt

Press, 6 February 1982, Page 9

Salvador guerrillas step up drive to topple Govt

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador Leftist guerrillas, stepping up their, bid to topple the American-backed Government of El Salvador, attacked towns and. Army positions yesterday in various parts of the Central American country. Both sides claimed control of the border town of Corinto while fighting continued around the important eastern city of Usulutan, Radio Venceremos, the insurgents’ ' radio station, said about 40 soldiers had died in the battles.

A guerrilla force also attacked the market town of Tonacalapeque. killing three local civil defence volunteers before the Army arrived in strength. “A tremendous battle went on around our heads for about four hours early this morning," one resident of this town, about 25km from the capital, told NZPAReuter. The Army said they would

search the rural area’ for the

guerrillas but one officer said he doubted if they would have much success. “They just disappear into the night as quickly as they appear," he said.

The guerrillas have mounted an offensive to try to disrupt elections called for

March 28 by the junta, which is headed by President Jose Napoleon Duarte. The Government has pledged that the elections will go ahead “even under a hail of gunfire." Guerrillas occupied Corinto and Nueva Trinidad amidst fierce fighting at the start of the week. The Government said 150 people died in Nueva Trinidad while it was being retaken. Military authorities said that most of them were civilians “massacred by subversives."

The junta and the guerrillas have often accused each other of civilian massacres during the civil war which last year claimed 15,000 lives.

In its daily broadcast, the guerrilla Radio Venceremos said that only one Government aircraft and a helicopter on reconnaissance missions were sighted over Usulutan in three days of fighting in the area.

This indicated the success of a recent guerrilla attack against a Salvadorean Air Force base in which they claimed to have destroyed about 70 per cent of the Air Force, it added. The United States responded by sending SUSSS million in emergency aid to El Salvador, half of it to

replace aircraft. Radio Venceremos yesterday denied that the guerrillas were responsible foe the murder 10 days ago of the National Conciliation Party leader. Rodriguez Gonzalez, who was the first major casualty of the election campaign.

It blamed Rightists for his death.

In another development, “El Diario de Hoy,” one of El Salvador’s major newspapers, said it had been told by a caller identifying himself as a member of an antiCommunist organisation that the group would begin a new “clean-up” operation on Monday. The targets, he said, will be “delinquents, assassins, extortionists, kidnappers, assailants, thieves, pickpockets and other specimens” who if not eliminated would bring chaos to the country.

The newspaper also quoted the caller as saying that his organisation was responsible for most of the bodies that had been found in a rubbish dump at El Playon, an expanse of lava rock 2.5 km north-west of the capital. The bodies began appearing there late last year. During a visit to El Playon yesterday, a man was encountered who reported searching for articles he

could salvage every two weeks and finding new bodies each time. He pointed to skulls and bones that he said had not been there before.

In Washington, the chief White House spokesman declined to make a policy statement yesterday when asked if the United States would use the forces of a friendly country in a covert move to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government. The question put to the White House communications director, David Gergen. stemmed from an A.B.C. News report yesterday that forces from Argentina were to be infiltrated into Nicaragua with the aim of halting the alleged trans-shipments of Soviet arms from Nicaragua for use against Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. Mr Gergen’s reply was: “We just don’t comment on questions of this kind, but no inference should be drawn from that statement.”

Mr Gergen at first said he did not know the current position of the Reagan Administration, although there had been earlier statements that it would not try to overthrow governments anywhere. Several hours later, he issued his statement which withheld direct comment.