Contras Say They Smashed Sandinista Command Post, Killing 12

Nicaraguan rebel leaders said Thursday that their troops scored a small but important victory last month, overrunning the command post of a government infantry brigade and killing at least eight Sandinista officers and four soldiers.

They said that a commando unit destroyed the field headquarters of the 313rd Infantry Brigade near the town of San Sebastian de Yali in northern Nicaragua on June 28.

“This was a very successful operation,” said Adolfo Calero, chief of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest of the U.S.-backed rebel armies known as contras. “But the Sandinistas haven’t said a word about it.”

Pictures, Documents Shown

Calero displayed several photographs and captured documents as evidence of the raid. He said one of the documents was an order to the brigade by its commander to plant land mines in areas where the contras were believed to be operating.

“Set up ambushes with MON-50 anti-personnel mines in areas where the (Sandinista) troops are ambushed,” the written order said.

“This means that they are mining way inside the country, not just inside the border,” Calero said.

His claims could not be verified.

Controversy has long surrounded the use of land mines by both sides in the Nicaraguan guerrilla war, because the explosives harm civilians as easily as military traffic.

Sandinista officials said that 32 civilians were killed when a contra mine exploded under a truck on a road in northern Jinotega province July 2. In late May, the Sandinista newspaper Barricada reported that six Nicaraguan civilians and a Spanish medical worker were killed by a contra mine on another rural road in Jinotega.

Infiltration Routes

The Sandinistas have mined contra infiltration routes along the Honduran border for at least the past three years.

The contras also charged that Sandinista commandos fired on the house of one of their supporters in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa on Wednesday evening.

Spokesman Bosco Matamoros said two persons were injured in the attack on the home of contra backer Jose Tefel while he was having a party.

“It was a terrorist attack on members of the resistance who were not involved in military activities,” Matamoros charged.