2 Seize Salvador School, Give Up After 6 Hours

SAN SALVADOR — A Salvadoran army deserter and a teen-age girl, their motives unclear, occupied a primary school with more than 900 students and teachers for more than six hours Wednesday before releasing their hostages and surrendering to the army.

Military officials said the corporal was a guerrilla of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front who had infiltrated the army communications command, but a communique from the guerrillas called the army report “absurd” and denied any connection with him or with the incident. A Roman Catholic Church official who spoke with the captors inside the school said that the soldier was “incoherent” and that the 16-year-old girl with him did not appear to be politically motivated.

In an interview with a television camera crew who entered the school, the apparently nervous soldier identified himself as “a captain of the guerrillas,” but unlike the typical Salvadoran guerrilla speaking to the media, he wore no mask. He and the girl were armed with rifles and a knife, but no one was injured during the occupation of the school.

Police Patrol Ambushed

The incident began unfolding an hour after guerrillas ambushed a National Police patrol about two miles away in downtown San Salvador. Three policemen were killed and two were wounded in the assault, the first urban guerrilla attack in nearly a year.

The 9:30 a.m. ambush on a National Police car was mounted by four armed and masked guerrillas driving a Jeep Cherokee and a Toyota pickup truck, according to witnesses. All four escaped.

The ambush and the hostage-taking were apparently not related.

The leftist Farabundo Marti guerrillas, fighting a seven-year-old civil war that has claimed 62,000 lives, have said repeatedly in recent clandestine radio broadcasts that their fighters have returned to the capital.

Military officials said the soldier, Juan Francisco Medrano, 18, had deserted his unit on Monday and attacked an urban civil defense unit the same day, capturing two rifles.

The girl was identified as Gloria Noemi Escobar, 16. The chief of the Treasury Police, Gen. Reinaldo Golcher, said that Escobar was Medrano’s girlfriend.

Area Cordoned Off

More than 900 students and teachers were inside the public school in the earthquake-devastated San Jacinto neighborhood when the pair took it over in mid-morning. Scores of police quickly cordoned off the area to keep back onlookers and frantic parents of the 1st- through 9th-graders, while the soldier’s mother and brother were brought in to aid in negotiations.

Gregorio Rosa Chavez, auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, also was brought in to talk to the pair holding the hostages.

Medrano and Escobar locked themselves in the administrative offices of the school with the school director, at least one teacher and about 20 to 40 of the 9th-graders.

Mirna Alfaro Corleto, a teacher, said the mood was “very tense” in the office.

Police Evacuate Students

The rest of the students had been ordered into classrooms. Throughout the morning and afternoon, police filed open metal bars on classroom windows and broke down a wooden door to evacuate all the children except those held in the office.

Many of the children emerged for the school in tears after hours in captivity and said the pair had warned them that if they fled, the other children would be killed.

Gen. Golcher said the soldier’s former commander finally persuaded him to surrender.

“He told them they were surrounded and that the logical thing to do was for them to give up. He told (the soldier) he was talking to him as his commander,” Golcher said.

The two finally put down their weapons about 5 p.m., released their hostages and walked out of the school with military officials.

In a late-night communique, the Farabundo Marti guerrillas blamed the armed forces for the incident, saying it was part of a pattern of military violence and noting that Medrano was a soldier.

“Never would our combatants carry out such irrational actions, much less against poor sectors,” the rebels said. “This was an excuse by the high command to reduce the impact of the event on them.”