11 Rebels Die in Mexico Shootout, Government Says

MEXICO CITY —  Marxist guerrillas opened fire on an army anti-drug patrol at dawn Sunday in a village outside Acapulco, and the soldiers killed 11 rebels in the ensuing six-hour firefight, the Defense Ministry said.

The incident was the first significant violence involving Mexico’s second-largest rebel movement, the Popular Revolutionary Army, since May 1997, when nine people in the region were killed in a series of attacks by the group. The country’s larger and better-known guerrilla group is the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which operates in the southern state of Chiapas.

The Popular Revolutionary Army, known by its Spanish initials as the EPR, first surfaced in June 1996 and operates in rural areas of Guerrero state, which includes the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, as well as in adjacent Oaxaca. Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas are Mexico’s poorest states.

It was not immediately clear whether Sunday’s clash represented an escalation in the government’s conflict with the EPR, which has been largely silent in recent months, or if the bloodshed was the result of a chance encounter between the patrol and the armed unit.

The military said in a communique that the army patrol was traveling in the municipality of Ayutla, a remote, mountainous region about 50 miles east of Acapulco, as part of the “Permanent Campaign Against Narcotics,” when it came across three people armed with rifles in the village of El Charco.

The soldiers called on the suspects to put down their arms, but they opened fire instead, the statement said, and ran into a schoolhouse.

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Despite what the communique said were repeated requests from the soldiers to those inside the school to surrender, the alleged guerrillas in the building were said to have fired hundreds of rounds. The confrontation ended by 10:55 a.m., leaving 11 rebels dead, five wounded and 21 arrested, the statement added. The Defense Ministry said no soldiers were injured.

Soldiers rounded up 14 AK-47 assault rifles and a 9-millimeter pistol and called in the national attorney general’s office to carry out a forensic investigation.

Reuters news agency quoted Julio Leocadio, an elected member of Ayutla’s local government, as saying that EPR rebels first appeared in the town last year. Since then, he said, army patrols have increased, blocking local traffic, and soldiers have detained a number of local residents, raising tensions in the community.

The military said the soldiers identified the attackers as EPR cadres by their distinctive clothing, their weapons and their method of operation. They said one of those arrested, schoolteacher Erika Zamora Pardo, said she had been hired in Mexico City for $22 a day by one of those who died in the shootout.

Radio reports suggested that EPR guerrillas might have been undergoing military training in the schoolhouse, but information from the scene was sketchy.

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The EPR emerged on the first anniversary of the massacre of 17 peasants by police in the Guerrero town of Aguas Blancas in June 1995. Since its appearance, clashes in which it has been involved have left 38 people dead--four civilians, four navy members, 11 soldiers and 19 police officers--the military said. An additional 59 people have been wounded and, after Sunday’s shootout, at least 15 guerrillas have been killed.

But the EPR has remained in the shadow of the larger guerrilla movement, the Zapatista army, which launched its uprising with a dramatic takeover of several cities in Chiapas on Jan. 1, 1994--the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect. More than 140 people were killed in fighting over the next several days before a cease-fire was negotiated.

The Zapatista rebellion is still regarded as the primary source of tension in Mexico, partly because of periodic confrontations between the government and surrogates for the Zapatistas. In December, 45 peasants were massacred in Chiapas by an apparent paramilitary group linked to local leaders of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.