Grim Find Backs Charges of Salvador Killings

Forensic experts have unearthed the skeletons of children and babies in this remote hamlet, bolstering charges that soldiers killed hundreds of civilians in the largest massacre in El Salvador’s civil war.

Twenty-two battered skulls and skeletons were exhumed Monday from the ruins of a church where U.S.-trained soldiers of the elite Atlacatl Battalion allegedly began a three-day slaughter of more than 800 people in December, 1981.

“They are all children and several were babies. At least one of the skulls shows bullet holes; most of the others are in pieces,” said Patricia Bernardi, one of four Argentine forensic anthropologists leading the excavation work.

The skeletons uncovered so far lie in a 72-square-foot area around the church office. Hundreds more are believed to be buried under earth and rubble in the church and nearby homes.

Until the first skeletons were found last Friday, human rights groups had based their accusations on the testimony of Rufina Amaya, sole survivor of the massacre.

No one was ever charged with the killings; El Salvador’s army has suggested they never took place. President Alfredo Cristiani says he has no information on who was in charge of the counterinsurgency sweep through the El Mozote area.

“He has the information but does not want to give it,” said Maria Julia Hernandez of the Salvadoran Catholic Church’s human rights office. “But this evidence cannot be ignored.”

The church has listed about 800 victims of the massacre in El Mozote and five other nearby hamlets, but church officials believe the total could exceed 1,000.

Workers at El Mozote chisel carefully away at the earth while the Argentine experts clean off bone fragments with small paint brushes and prepare for the complicated task of identifying the victims.

They say the bones of some victims may be sent to the United States for DNA analysis. The results would be matched up with the DNA of relatives who survived by fleeing the area before the troops arrived.

Relatives presented formal charges against the armed forces in October, 1990, and are pushing for compensation.

Results from the exhumations will be presented to the U.N.-appointed Truth Commission set up under a January peace treaty to investigate human rights violations during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.