Sandinista troops attacked U.S.-backed Contra rebels just hours after President Daniel Ortega ended a 19-month truce, official news reports and the rebels said Thursday.
Combat units in 14 towns and villages in northern Nicaragua began operations overnight against the rebels, said Barricada, the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front newspaper. But it gave few details.An army company, backed by militias, attacked a group of about 30 Contras in the area around Quilali, a town in northern Nueva Segovia province near the Honduran border, the newspaper said.
The report could not be independently verified immediately.
An Interior Ministry source, who insisted on anonymity, told The Associated Press that army and Interior Ministry troops "are working together" in launching attacks against the rebels, but refused to go into details.
"We will carry out search-and-destroy missions against Contra forces who are attacking us and murdering our peasants," Nicaraguan defense ministry spokeswoman Lt.-Col. Rosa Pasos had promised earlier.
Here are other developments:
-The Contra command said there were victims among the local population in the fresh Nicaraguan offensive but gave no figures.
Contra military chief Enrique Bermudez said his forces had been ordered to avoid combat but reserved the right to self-defense.
A Contra communique said: "The breaking of the cease-fire by the Sandinista army is already in effect because the Nicaraguan military today intensified its attacks against our forces and positions through widespread operations."
-President Bush condemned Nicaragua's action and said if Sandinista forces follow through with an offensive, "we would take a whole new look at" asking Congress for more Contra aid.
-Ortega contends the Contras are trying to subvert the electoral process. In an op-ed piece in Thursday's New York Times, Ortega says the Contras "are as convinced as I am . . . that the Nicaraguan people will give the Sandinistas a landslide victory" in elections Feb. 25. (The entire article will run on the Deseret News editorial page Friday.)
Ortega said that during October, Contra units closed more than 50 voter registration centers, preventing thousands from registering.
-Ortega has said holding elections hinges on U.S. support for demobilization of the Contras.
He called for meetings next week at the United Nations so agreement can be reached on a mechanism for dismantling the Contras, who are based in Honduras.
-Alfredo Cesar, a former director of the Nicaraguan Resistance, said he believed Ortega's decision to end the truce confirmed a thesis of President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica.
"The thesis is that the Sandinista Front is afraid of peace," Cesar said, "that the Sandinista Front prefers war and is afraid of the political process in general."