2,706 Salvador Army Casualties in a Year

SAN SALVADOR — El Salvador’s armed forces suffered 2,706 casualties in the 12 months ending May 31, slightly fewer than in the previous year despite a continued growth in the size of the U.S.-backed military, Defense Minister Carlos Vides Casanova said Thursday.

In his annual report to El Salvador’s National Assembly, Vides Casanova said the military had killed, wounded or captured 3,448 anti-government guerrillas. That figure is equivalent to more than half the number of rebels that the armed forces say constitute the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Last year, Vides Casanova claimed that 4,434 guerrillas were killed, wounded or captured. So far, neither the armed forces nor U.S. officials have lowered the estimate that there are about 6,000 rebels.

In a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce earlier this month, Vides Casanova said that the military and security forces have more than tripled in the last six years to 52,000.

Vides Casanova said that, throughout the year, the armed forces have launched offensive operations “maintaining a constant military initiative to isolate the subversives physically and sociologically from the civilian population, reducing their presence to the north of Morazan and northeast of Chalatenango.”

However, guerrilla attacks in the center of the country have increased in recent months, and the guerrillas say they have shifted the focus of the war to the capital, where they are trying to build a base among unions and student groups such as those that supported them in the early 1980s.

In the last week, they have blown up two bridges, a new one along the Pan American Highway in the eastern province of Usulutan, and another in the central province of La Paz. They have continued their campaign of economic sabotage throughout the country, causing $10,000 in damage this week alone and bringing to $48 million the total cost of damages to the electricity system in seven years of civil war.

Attacking Police Patrols

The guerrillas have also begun to target police patrols in the capital this year, ambushing two of them downtown and one in the Mejicanos neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. They have launched six national transportation stoppages so far this year, the last two of which paralyzed traffic in the capital.

The guerrillas went on a military offensive from December to April, launching a series of lengthy attacks on fixed military positions in several provinces. In the most spectacular of the attacks, more than 200 soldiers were killed or wounded at El Paraiso, the main army garrison in Chalatenango province. An American military adviser was among the fatalities in that attack.

In May, the army countered with a 12,000-man offensive aimed largely at the provinces of Chalatenango, Morazan and San Miguel. That operation has kept the guerrillas from launching any major operations.

Last week, Gen. Adolfo Blandon, head of the joint chiefs of staff, said 75 soldiers had been killed and 125 wounded in the continuing operation. Most of those would not be included in the defense minister’s tally of casualties which only counted casualties up to May 31.

Vides Casanova said that in the previous 12 months, 459 soldiers had been killed, 2,234 wounded and 13 had disappeared. In the previous year, which was counted from June 30, 1985 to June 30, 1986, there were 477 soldiers killed, 2,482 wounded and 50 disappeared.