10 Salvador Villagers Reportedly Slain by Army

This peasant hamlet Friday mourned 10 villagers who witnesses said were slain by government troops in what appeared to be the largest reported incidence of civilian killings in four years.

More than a dozen relatives and neighbors of the dead who said they witnessed Wednesday’s events said that the seven men and three women were killed with grenades and rifle fire after being detained in their homes or while carrying out their daily tasks.

Benedicto Reyes, a resident of the nearby village of Santa Teresa, said that about 100 soldiers marched past his house Tuesday evening toward San Francisco, 30 miles east of San Salvador.

At 5:30 the next morning, a squad appeared at the home of Jose Atilio Rivas and his wife, Maria Julia Argueta, according to Argueta.

She said the soldiers thoroughly searched the home, then took her husband away and ordered her to stay inside with the couple’s three young children.

“They said they were going to give him a talk,” Argueta said. Her eyes red from weeping, she spoke only 5 feet from where her husband’s body lay in the village churchyard along with the nine others.

The 10 bodies, which villagers had carried in hammocks slung on poles from the site of the killings a mile away, exhibited shrapnel and gunshot wounds.

Lucia Henriquez, 80, said she was watching her grandchildren play in front of their adobe home Wednesday afternoon when soldiers appeared and told her to take the children inside and remain there.

Her home is about 150 yards from the site of the killings.

About the same time, according to several others detained in the village schoolhouse, soldiers working from a list took four women and one man from the school. One woman was released outside the building, where more than half of the villagers had been held most of the day without food or water.

According to the villagers, the other four were marched down a rocky and muddy path to a ravine, where six others were being held.

Henriquez said she heard three loud blasts--presumably hand grenades--and then sustained automatic rifle fire.

The nearly 40 residents detained in the schoolhouse were released Wednesday evening but prevented by the soldiers from going down the path to the ravine. They found the bodies at dawn Thursday.

A military press officer, asked Thursday about the villagers’ account, said the army had no further information but would investigate the matter.