The guerrillas frustrate the army and the U.S.
For nine days, the rattle of machine guns from helicopter gunships and the thump of heavy artillery and bombs filled the hazy air around the Salvadoran volcano of Guazapa. Some 2,000 members of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army were attacking guerrillas holed up in deeply entrenched camps along the mountainside, about 15 miles from the capital of San Salvador (pop. 1 million).
The battle was the most intense yet in the drawn-out and increasingly bloody conflict. More important, it marked a major new escalation of the...