Bomb Kills 10, Hurts 29 at Salvador Union Hall

SAN SALVADOR —  A bomb destroyed a leftist union hall in the capital Tuesday, killing 10 people and wounding at least 29, including two Americans.

The devastating explosion rocked the headquarters of the National Federation of Salvadoran Workers, the second largest union in El Salvador, at 12:30 p.m. Journalists who reached the scene in downtown San Salvador counted six mangled bodies in the rubble of the building. A Rosales Hospital spokesman said a union leader and a girl died while undergoing surgery.

The blast toppled concrete pillars, twisted girders and brought down most of the roof of the building in the heart of the capital, only two blocks from the National Police headquarters and four blocks from the Metropolitan Cathedral.

Union Secretary General Gerardo Diaz said two U.S. citizens--Brenda Hubbard of Los Angeles and Mark Anner of Connecticut--were among the wounded.

The union is considered a guerrilla front by the rightist government.

The bombings were the latest flare-up of violence in El Salvador’s decade-old civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people, most of them civilians. A rebel mortar attack on the Defense Ministry in San Salvador on Monday killed one civilian and injured 15 other people.

Hospital authorities on Tuesday identified one victim who died there as Febe Velasquez, a member of the union group’s directorate. The other was an unidentified teen-age girl. At least four more people were in critical condition, they said.

Among the dead was 21-year-old Julia Mendoza, a union official allegedly tortured and raped while she was being detained at the National Police headquarters in September.

The union offices were attacked Sept. 5 with an anti-tank rocket that damaged the building’s facade but inflicted no casualties.

Hector Recinos, a member of the group’s directorate, blamed the army for Tuesday’s attack. “This is a response to the attack on the Joint Chiefs,” he said, referring to the rebel assault on the Defense Ministry.

He said the bomb apparently was thrown from a passing vehicle.

An earlier bomb attack occurred at the downtown headquarters of Comadres, a leftist organization concerned with “disappeared people” and political prisoners. Four people were injured, including a U.S. citizen, none of them seriously. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Members of Comadres also blamed the army, but the armed forces press office denied that the army was responsible for the blast.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front on Tuesday announced a new offensive against the government. In a broadcast on their clandestine Radio Venceremos, the rebels said that Monday’s attack on the military headquarters marked the beginning of a new “military-political campaign.”