DATE=3/17/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=MEXICO GUERRILLAS (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-260304
BYLINE=GREG FLAKUS
DATELINE=MEXICO CITY
CONTENT=
INTRO: A small leftist group in Mexico has claimed
responsibility for an attempted mortar attack against
federal police Wednesday that injured two children.
As VOA's Greg Flakus reports from Mexico City, the
attack was apparently a reprisal for the recent
federal intervention to end a strike at the National
Auntonomous University of Mexico, known as UNAM.
TEXT: In two separate letters sent by electronic
mail to the Reforma newspaper, the Revolutionary Villa
Army of the People, also known as the Villistas (vee
YEE stahz), claimed credit for the attack. The group
also took credit for a similar attack against a
Mexican Air Force base, which also occurred Wednesday.
Neither attack produced any real damage to their
targets, but an explosive device from the attack
against the federal police here in Mexico City injured
two children who were playing in the field where the
mortars were left. One of the children, a seven-year-
old girl nearly lost an arm as a result of the
explosion and remains hospitalized.
In one of the letters, the Villistas called the story
of the injured children-- in the words of the letter--
"a criminal fraud elaborated by state intelligence
agencies to make people think we revolutionaries are
irresponsible and criminals."
But in a VOA telephone interview, the director of
communication for the Federal Preventive Police,
Claudia Martinez Sanchez, said the injuries caused by
the bomb were not make believe.
/// Martinez Sanchez act (Spanish) ///
She says that the people who say this was a fraud that
a child was hurt need only to see the photos of the
little girl and the damage done to her and her family.
The Villista group is considered a small splinter
group that broke off from the better-known Popular
Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla group operating in
southwest Mexico. In their letters, the Villistas say
they carried out the attacks to protest the Federal
Preventive Police action in February to end a nine-
month-long strike at UNAM.
The police force was under orders from Mexican
President Ernesto Zedillo to retake the university
after all attempts to negotiate with the leftist
radicals holding the campus had failed. A few dozen
of the strikers and the main leaders of the strike
council remain in jail and the Villistas are also
calling for their release. (Signed)
NEB/PT
17-Mar-2000 18:36 PM EDT (17-Mar-2000 2336 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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