4 Sandinistas Accused of Selling Rockets : Central America: Salvadoran rebels used the Soviet-made missiles recently to knock down two planes.

The government arrested four Sandinista army officers accused of selling 28 antiaircraft rockets to the leftist Salvadoran rebels, some of which were used in an offensive last month, the army said Tuesday.

Using surface-to-air missiles for the first time during their 11-year war against the rightist government of El Salvador, the guerrillas knocked down two Salvadoran army aircraft, on Nov. 23 and Dec. 4.

A former major, three captains and 11 Salvadoran civilians have been detained in the investigation of the sale of the Soviet-made missiles, said a three-page communique released by the Sandinista People’s Army.

The communique identified one of the men as Capt. Reynerio Padilla Alvarez, chief of the antiaircraft artillery regiment of the Sandinista air force.

It said the officers stole the weapons in October and sold them to the Salvadoran guerrillas without permission from the Sandinista army.

The United States, which has long accused the Sandinistas of backing the Salvadoran rebels in their guerrilla war, had reiterated those accusations after the recent attacks in El Salvador.

Salvadoran authorities gave the State Department the serial number of a piece of a SAM-14 rocket after it was fired at a Salvadoran aircraft.

The Moscow government confirmed that the serial number matched a shipment of rockets the Soviets gave the Sandinista People’s Army in February, 1986, the Sandinista communique said.

The officers sold the Salvadorans 16 of the SAM-14 surface-to-air missiles and 12 SAM-7 rockets, the communique said.

The officers involved were paid “several thousand dollars” by Joaquin Villalobos, a leading commander of the rebels’ Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and another contact named “Rodrigo,” the army said.

The sale took place “in clandestine meetings in Managua,” the communique said. “The whereabouts of these two Salvadorans is not known,” it added.

Villalobos has been based behind rebel lines in the mountains of El Salvador’s Morazan province for the past decade.

On Monday, army spokesman Capt. Alberto Acevedo told the Associated Press that the reports of Sandinista arms sales were false, part of “an old campaign” by U.S. officials who wanted to claim the Sandinistas were disobeying the Nicaraguan government.

The Sandinistas, who took power in a 1979 revolution, were defeated in elections last February that installed moderate President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. However, they have kept control of the army and police.