Argentine Troops Battle Rebels Who Seized Army Base

Argentine troops backed by tanks and artillery stormed an army base near the capital Monday and battled gunmen who had seized the facility in a dawn raid, the military said. Officials said the attackers were leftist guerrillas.

At least 20 of the estimated 50 gunmen were killed or wounded and fighting was reportedly continuing at the La Tablada base, headquarters of the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment, the independent news agency Diarios y Noticias reported.

Hospital officials said at least four soldiers were killed and that 28 others, including soldiers, police officers and one reporter, were wounded.

The rebels smashed through the base’s main gates in a stolen Coca-Cola truck shortly after dawn, lobbing grenades at buildings where soldiers slept, news agencies reported. Witnesses said the truck and six cars that followed it carried 30 to 50 men and women.

Many of the regiment’s 300 officers and troops, mostly conscripts, were allowed to spend the weekend off the base, situated 12 miles north of the capital, and only about 100 were at La Tablada at the time of the attack, the government news agency Telam reported.

Buenos Aires provincial police quickly surrounded the base, evacuated area residents, diverted traffic and took up sharpshooter positions in nearby homes and buildings.

Defense Minister Horacio Jaunarena and army chief Gen. Francisco Gassino immediately sent elite troops to assist soldiers and provincial police.

About noon, two small tanks rolled onto the base and opened fire on the officers’ club. Soldiers fired mortar rounds and artillery shells onto the buildings held by the gunmen. The shells caved in at least one building, and the regimental cafeteria, cells and guard post were in flames, news agencies reported. Dozens of the conscripts at the base reportedly escaped during the counterattack.

By early evening, the gunmen were isolated in the officers’ club, chapel and armory, although some took up positions in buildings and trees outside the base and sniped at soldiers and police, Diarios y Noticias reported.

Witnesses said dozens of people in civilian clothes, police agents, army soldiers and raiders roamed the base shooting at each other.

Soldiers held back from an all-out attack on the buildings for fear of injuring conscripts thought to be held hostage by the attackers, news agencies reported.

The rebels distributed pamphlets praising ousted Lt. Col. Aldo Rico, who led short-lived uprisings in April, 1987, and January, 1988. The leaflets praised Rico’s so-called New Argentine Army and said “Long Live Rico!” and “Long Live Seineldin!”

Col. Mohamed Ali Seineldin led a four-day military insurrection last month. Both he and Rico are now in military prison.

But Cesar Jaroslavsky, leader of the ruling Radical Civic Union in the House of Deputies, said at least one of the attackers was a member of the leftist Peoples Revolutionary Army, which engaged soldiers in open battle a decade ago but has been inactive since.

Military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the rebels were leftist guerrillas. Government officials said they may be members of Montonero, another leftist group that carried out kidnapings, bombings and assassinations in the 1970s.

Defense Ministry spokesmen rejected the possibility that soldiers sided with the attackers. They also said the attack was not a military insurrection against President Raul Alfonsin, who has put down three such uprisings in the past 21 months.

By late afternoon, there were no reports of attacks on other bases in the nation.

The assault was treated as a potentially grave threat, and the most serious of its kind since Montonero and the Peoples Revolutionary Army attacked an army arsenal near Buenos Aires in 1975.

Additional troops were dispatched to Government House in downtown Buenos Aires, where Alfonsin was at work Monday, and the president’s official residence in suburban Olivos.