Salvadorans Retaliate for Marine Killings, U.S. Says

El Salvador’s armed forces, acting on intelligence information provided by the United States, have mounted a series of retaliatory raids against the guerrilla group believed responsible for the June 19 murders of four U.S. Marines in San Salvador, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Officials said that the Salvadorans launched the raids against the Central American Workers’ Revolutionary Party, the leftist group that claimed responsibility for gunning down 13 patrons at two sidewalk cafes, in response to a call from President Reagan for action against the organization. The group is more commonly known by its Spanish initials, PRTC.

“In a series of actions within two weeks after the murder of the Marines, Salvadoran regular forces captured nine members of the PRTC, including two key leaders, killed 21 and wounded 40,” a Pentagon statement said.

But both U.S. and Salvadoran officials said they do not know whether any of the gunmen who carried out the June 19 attack were among the casualties.

“It’s true that we received intelligence from the United States to detect subversives’ positions and it is true that we have hit hard at the PRTC,” a Salvadoran military spokesman, Maj. Carlos A. Aviles, said in a telephone interview from San Salvador. “But we have not captured or killed members of the PRTC whom we know are responsible for the murders.”

Aviles denied that retaliation was the reason for the raids.

“It was not a retaliation,” he said. “This is all part of our 1985 plan for striking at the guerrillas. There had been more intelligence gathered from captured subversives and other sources but that’s the only thing that increased.”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials said they consider the raids to be retaliatory. They said that the CIA mounted a major effort to locate the rebel units and provide intelligence to the Salvadoran armed forces, specifically to enable them to attack the guerrilla group in response to the murders.

According to Aviles, the raids occurred in late June or early July in the mountainous area of Cerros de San Pedro, about 30 miles northeast of San Salvador.

Army units supported by U.S.-supplied A-37 jet bombers attacked several guerrilla camps in the area, according to Salvadoran military reports at the time.

Aviles said he could provide no further details of the operations. He said the Revolutionary Party members captured were being interrogated in connection with the murders.

U.S. officials said there was no American participation beyond providing intelligence that located the rebel units and urging the Salvadorans to act on it.

One official said that President Reagan personally urged Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte to act against the guerrilla group.

‘Move Any Mountain’

At a memorial ceremony for the slain Marines on June 22, Reagan said: “We and the Salvadoran leaders will move any mountain and ford any river to find the jackals and bring them and their colleagues to justice.”

The raids were first disclosed by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, who said he believes that they would deter future terrorist attacks.

“We have done a number of things that are, I think, very discouraging to future terrorist acts,” Weinberger said in an interview with Mutual Radio news. “The Salvadoran government, with our assistance, has taken care of in one way or another--taken prisoner or killed . . . (in) raids--a number of the people who participated in that killing.”

State and Defense department officials said later that Weinberger erred when he said the actual gunmen had been killed or captured. “We still don’t know who most of them were,” one State Department official said.

But the defense secretary’s disclosure was the first confirmation that the United States had moved to retaliate for the murders. The Administration reportedly considered an air strike on a Nicaraguan base where Revolutionary Party guerrillas are believed to have received training, but issued a diplomatic warning to the Sandinista regime instead.

Reconnaissance Flights

The United States has long provided the Salvadoran armed forces with intelligence on guerrilla forces, collected both by the CIA and by frequent U.S. military reconnaissance flights over El Salvador.

After the June 19 attack, which also killed two American businessmen and seven Salvadorans, the CIA station in San Salvador formed a joint task force with Salvadoran officials to develop intelligence on the insurgents and to attempt to identify the gunmen involved, Administration officials said.

The Revolutionary Party is the smallest of the five guerrilla organizations in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the coalition of leftists fighting Duarte’s U.S.-backed government.

Along with the rest of the coalition, the Revolutionary Party has recently increased its emphasis on urban warfare as its fortunes in the Salvadoran countryside have declined. Spokesmen for the Revolutionary Party and the umbrella group have said that they consider the attack on the Marines, who were unarmed embassy guards in civilian clothes, a legitimate tactic.

Doyle McManus reported from Washington and Dan Williams from Los Angeles.