Salvador Rebels Raid Prison; 104 Inmates Escape

Leftist guerrillas attacked El Salvador’s largest prison Friday with mortar and rifle fire, and 104 prisoners escaped in the confusion, the prison warden said. Three guards were wounded, one critically.

Jose Vitelio Escobar, commander of La Mariona Prison, said the raid occurred as many of the inmates were near their cells, about to be locked up for the evening.

“The prisoners were outside in the exercise yard when the guerrillas lobbed grenades into the sentry box on the south wall,” Vitelio Escobar said. “They continued lobbing grenades and mortars over the wall, and then they shot (a mortar) through the south wall.”

One round left a three-foot-wide hole in the thick masonry, through which most of the prisoners made their escape.

National police, who were notified immediately after the attack, soon captured one convict, the warden said. The Salvadoran army’s 1st Brigade, based in the capital, ringed the prison after the outbreak, and a C-47 gunship was seen circling the area.

The prison is situated in a sparsely populated area between two working-class neighborhoods two miles north of the capital. It holds 1,500 inmates, including 433 political detainees, Vitelio Escobar said. He added that of those who broke out during the half-hour atttack, 13 were political prisoners and the rest, common criminals.

Order was restored at La Mariona within two hours of the escapes, Col. Carlos Avila, the nation’s chief military spokesman, said.