Nicaragua Dangerous Highways

Did the contras attack church workers and kill two nuns?

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra says the U.S.-backed contras did it. The contras deny any responsibility. Nicaragua's political opposition says the Sandinistas may be accountable. Publicly the Bush Administration says Washington hasn't a clue who did it, but privately officials suggest it was renegade Miskito Indians in the area. On this much, however, all parties agree: the incident was, as one contra spokesman put it, "a monstrous and abominable crime."

Two Roman Catholic nuns, Sister Maureen Courtney, 45, of Milwaukee, and Sister Teresa de Jesus Rosales, a Nicaraguan in her early 20s, died last week in a bloody nocturnal ambush 200...

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