Masked Gunmen Mark Year-Old Peasant Slayings

A band of masked men brandishing AK-47 rifles interrupted mourners remembering a peasant massacre in southwestern Mexico on Friday, saying they had formed a new armed group to fight the government.

About 70 men wearing olive green uniforms appeared suddenly from the mountains in Guerrero state, fired 17 shots into the air and laid a wreath at the spot where police killed 17 peasants a year ago, radio station Radio Red said.

“They suddenly came down from the mountains. . . . Everyone was amazed,” the radio’s reporter on the spot said.

The government played down the importance of the event, saying the men were staging a publicity stunt and stressing that the event bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Zapatista armed uprising in Chiapas state in 1994.

But a joint statement from the attorney general’s office and the Interior Ministry said army troops were hunting the band because they were carrying illegal weapons.

Contradicting the radio report, the official statement said the group numbered just 38.

The armed band appeared as about 5,000 mourners gathered at the ford of Aguas Blancas in Guerrero, about 130 miles southwest of Mexico City, to remember the peasants, whose slaying sparked a human rights crisis for Mexico.