Rebels driven from Esteli

Press, 17 April 1979, Page 9

Rebels driven from Esteli

NZPA-Reuter Managua, Nicaragua

Nicaraguan troops have sealed off the battle-scarred city of Esteli after driving out Leftist guerrillas in more than a week of bitter fighting.

National Guardsmen would not let residents leave, and barred all but a few relief workers from entering. Reporters were stopped at National Guard road-blocks.

Refugees approached heav-ily-armed Guardsmen pleading to leave the city, but were turned back. They said Esteli, 146 km north of Managua, had been without water or electricity for a week, and little food was left.

One woman in Esteli, reached by telephone, said, “People are back in the streets for the first time since the heavy fighting began.” She said the residents were “very nervous

and afraid, and most go inside when the Guard passes. Dozens of buzzards are circling over El Calvario.” That is the poor district where the guerrillas made their last stand before slipping through encircling Government lines and into the hills on Sunday.

An estimated 400 Sandinista National Liberation Front guerrillas stormed the 100-man National Guard garrison in the city of 35,000 on April 5. It was the biggest assault since the Sandinista spearheaded a civil war last September in an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the regime of President Anastasio Somoza. The Somoza family had dominated the Central American nation’s politics for the last 40 years. President Somoza has been on holiday in the United States since last week, and was scheduled to return from Miami today.