12 Nicaraguan troops ‘caught smuggling’

Press, 31 March 1983, Page 6

12 Nicaraguan troops ‘caught smuggling’

NZPA Tegucigalpa Honduras claimed yesterday that its Army had intercepted Nicaraguan troops smuggling weapons to the Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador.

Nicaragua said that its planes bombed a rebel airport discovered inside Nicaraguan territory. The Interior Minister, Mr Tomas Borge, said that the Nicaraguan Air Force had found the airport near the Honduran border between two rivers, the Coco and the Bocay in the Jinotega Province. Mr Borge said that the rebel forces had suffered casualties, but gave no figures. The planes also bombed small groups of rebels in the area, he said. Earlier, Nicaragua claimed that Honduran troops attacked two Nicaraguan border posts. The Honduran presidency denied the accusation. There were also reports of more sporadic fighting in northern Nicaragua between Nicaraguan troops and antiSandinista exiles based in Honduras. The exiles claimed to have killed

20 Nicaraguans in an ambush. Mr Borge said that Federal security forces fought guerrillas in the same region where the rebel airport was found. Three Government soldiers were killed and three others wounded, while the rebels suffered an undetermined number of casualties. A Honduran Government spokesman told reporters that security forces had intercepted 12 Nicaraguan

soldiers carrying a “large quantity” of weapons on Saturday at Nacaome, more than two-thirds of the way across the 110 km neck of Honduran territory between Nicaragua and El Salvador. There was no immediate comment from Nicaragua’s Leftist Sandinista Government, which has repeatedly denied claims by the United States and its allies in the Salvadorean Government that the Sandinistas were funnelling Soviet and Cuban weapons to the guerrillas.