Withdrawal by Nicaraguan Units Reported

The Sandinista army is ending its biggest offensive ever against the Contras and may be withdrawing from Honduran territory, diplomats and other informed sources said Friday.

Combat between the Sandinistas and the Contras has diminished, and the Sandinistas have lessened their artillery fire against Contra bases inside Honduras, said sources with access to intelligence information. They said Nicaraguan troops are believed to be pulling back, but the Contras are maintaining a defensive line too far from the border to confirm the withdrawal.

There are no Honduran troops in the remote jungle area, about 140 miles east of the capital, and the Honduran military also cannot determine the Sandinistas’ exact position, a high-ranking military officer said.

Hondurans Retaliated

On Thursday, the Honduran air force bombed a Sandinista command post at Amaka, about 5 miles south of the border, in retaliation for the incursion into Honduran territory. The Honduran officer, who declined to be identified, threatened to send ground troops into the border combat area if the Sandinista troops are not withdrawn.

“Our intention is to continue to deal them blows until they stop penetrating our territory,” said the officer.

The Honduran air force sent reconnaissance flights over Nicaraguan territory Wednesday and Thursday morning before the bombing, according to Nicaraguan and other sources.

The U.S.-backed Contras have maintained logistical, training and rest bases in Honduras throughout the 6-year war. The Sandinistas have crossed the border on rebel offensives at least three other times. The Hondurans also retaliated with an air strike the last time, in December, 1986.

In a further show of military might, hundreds of U.S. paratroopers spilled out of C-141 transport planes at Palmerola Air Base on Friday, bringing to at least 3,150 the number of U.S. troops sent here in the last two days. They join about 2,000 U.S. troops already in Honduras.

The soldiers, from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and the 7th Light Infantry Division at Ft. Ord, Calif., are being deployed in compass navigation and patrolling exercises along with Honduran troops in four locations. The closest exercise to the combat area is in Juticalpa, about 90 miles northwest of San Andres de Bocay, where the fighting took place.

The other exercises are being held in Palmerola, San Lorenzo on the Gulf of Fonseca, and Tamara, just northwest of the capital.

Three U.S. paratroopers suffered foot and ankle injuries in landing at Palmerola, U.S. officials said.

The troops have orders to stay away from combat, the officials added.

Gen. Frederick F. Woerner Jr., commander of the U.S. Southern Command with headquarters in Panama, reviewed the arrival of about 800 paratroopers at Palmerola and told reporters that there are some “very, very preliminary” indications that the Sandinistas were beginning to withdraw from Honduras.

The Nicaraguan government has never publicly acknowledged that its troops crossed the border, although some officials reportedly admitted so in private.

U.S. and Contra sources said that 1,500 to 2,000 Sandinista troops entered Honduras during the offensive. The Honduran government’s official statement referred to “several hundred” Sandinistas, and one Western diplomatic source said the figure was “in the hundreds rather than in the thousands.”

The Bocay River Valley, where the offensive took place, is the Contras’ primary overland supply route and leads to their command and supply headquarters. On Thursday, Lt. Col. Javier Carrion, the Sandinista army deputy chief of staff, said the offensive had ended Wednesday, but Contras reported continued fighting until Friday.

During the offensive, the Sandinistas managed to rout the Contras from the Bocay Valley, but they failed to attack the rebels’ strategic command headquarters or to destroy an estimated 300,000 pounds of ammunition and other military supplies in caches along the Coco River.

“The offensive has subsided,” Contra political chief Adolfo Calero said in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location.

“They have taken some of our positions, but they have not caused disarray. . . . They failed in their objectives to destroy us and to destroy our few supplies,” he said.

Calero admitted there were 56 dead and wounded among the rebels, but other sources said Contra casualties were nearly twice that and about equal to Sandinista casualties.

Informed sources said there were about 2,000 Contras in the Bocay area accompanied by nearly 2,200 civilians, many of them family members of the fighters. They said the rebels are short of food and fuel. They also said they had no functioning helicopter to evacuate their wounded from the zone and were treating them in field hospitals.

In Nicaragua on Thursday, Carrion said that 4,500 Sandinistas from four Irregular Warfare Battalions, two Special Forces Battalions and one militia battalion participated in the offensive. They were supported by AN-26 Soviet-made planes that dropped bombs and Soviet-supplied MI-25 and MI-17 helicopters.

Sources in Honduras said the Sandinistas used mortars and multiple rocket launchers. They said the Sandinistas crossed the Coco River into Honduras on March 12 and helicoptered troops into the area on both sides of the border.

Carrion said the army drove about 1,800 Contras from six camps along the Coco River.

According to Carrion, the offensive began March 6, when the army routed Contras from a position they held at Amaka, at the juncture of the Bocay and Amaka rivers. On March 12, the Sandinistas began attacking San Andres de Bocay and drove the Contras away from a landing strip there. In the following two days, the Sandinistas moved northeast toward Mukuwas and Wayawas.

Carrion asserted that on March 11 and 12, U.S. Army Chinook helicopters landed across from Mukuwas to evacuate Contra wounded. U.S. officials say they have not aided the Contras since Feb. 29, the day that U.S. aid officially expired.

Carrion said the Sandinistas ended the offensive Wednesday because of “a North American threat to escalate the war.”

Carrion said he considers the offensive a success. “We knew the Contras had a major base opposite Mukuwas,” he said. “This is their fundamental platform for attacks into Nicaraguan territory. The base was part of an integrated system on both sides of the Coco and by destroying the Nicaraguan side, we destabilized this whole system.”

He said the Contras launched their December attack on three towns in northern Nicaragua from the Bocay base. One of those towns, Bonanza, was the Sandinistas’ forward operating base for this Bocay offensive. Bocay is about 70 miles from Bonanza, the nearest population center.

The Sandinistas launched a similar 3,000-man offensive in the Bocay region last May but did not cross into Honduras. They withdrew from the area after several weeks because its isolation makes it costly to maintain troops there.

Carrion said the Sandinistas let the Contras build up an infrastructure before attacking again. He acknowledged that the army had other “priorities” in the war.

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux contributed to this story from Managua.