Green Berets Flee After Guerrillas End Siege of Hotel in San Salvador

A group of U.S. Army Green Berets fled from a luxury hotel in San Salvador this morning after leftist guerrillas abandoned their 28-hour siege of the building and fled.

The soldiers--who had demanded assurances that they could leave safely--sprinted from a five-story hotel annex when Salvadoran security forces and reporters outside assured them the rebels were no longer in the area.

The Green Berets ran crouched, carrying M-16s with grenades on their belts to waiting police pickup trucks that sped off with them.

Reports in El Salvador varied on the number of soldiers who had been trapped overnight in the building, but a U.S. official in Washington said there were 12.

President Bush said today that a unit of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force commandos sent to El Salvador had “liberated” the hotel, but an Administration official said later that the force never went into action.

The White House issued a statement saying “updated information showed U.S. forces did not actually enter the hotel. Entry proved to be unnecessary.”

Bush, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, said the Delta team was joined by special operations forces from the Salvadoran government. He said he consulted with Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani about the action but that the decision to go forward was his alone.

“They were our special operations . . . that I sent down there,” Bush said. “When you see Americans held hostage like this, there’s a message in all this. This President, backed by our defense secretary, will stand to protect the lives of Americans wherever we can.”

But in Washington, an Administration official knowledgeable about the early morning operation said the U.S. special operations forces never went into action.

The 12 Green Berets inside the hotel, normally stationed with the 7th Special Forces Group in Ft. Bragg, N.C., had been in the country at the end of a two-week training mission. They had been scheduled to return to the United States on Tuesday, when the hotel was besieged by the rebels, a U.S. official said.

Most of the 15 to 20 leftist guerrillas in the hotel apparently slipped away during the night, the Green Berets said.

“We watched them and could have shot them if we wanted to, but that’s not our job,” one said.

The Green Berets had been holed up near a stairwell on the fourth floor of the five-story “VIP Tower” while government troops conducted a house-to-house search in the wealthy San Salvador neighborhood of Escalon.

Reporters who went through the third and fifth floors of the hotel where the rebels were on Tuesday found none this morning. The hotel is known as the El Salvador Sheraton.

It was not clear if the rebels had intended to seize the hotel annex.

The group of fighters was not large enough to seize the sprawling hotel complex, and the rebels denied trying to kidnap Joao Baena Soares, chief of the Organization of American States, who was staying there. One of the trapped U.S. soldiers said the guerrillas appeared surprised and confused when they entered the annex.