1.
GV & CU San Salvador street scenes showing roadside shops, many of them shut (2 shots)
0.15

2.
GV & CU Bus station with people boarding buses
0.29

3.
LV Street scene
0.34

4.
CU INTERIOR Body of business man being lifted from stretcher
0.52

5.
SV & CU Soldiers patrolling outskirts of the city in a jeep with mounted machine-gun
0.59

6.
SV & CU Troops breaking down a door of a house and entering (2 SHOTS)
1.33

7.
CU Articles found in search of house being thrown on road, including a red hood
1.44

8.
SV & CU Soldiers in jeep trying on hood (3 SHOTS)
1.56

9.
GV PAN remote shack in country area with troops running in nearby fields
2.08

10.
SV & CU People looking at the bodies of two men killed in a gun-fight with police
2.19




Initials CLM/





Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: A three-day general strike began in El Salvador on Wednesday (13 August). In the capital, San Salvador, the reaction was mixed, but the violence continued unabated.

SYNOPSIS: The strike was called by the Leftist Democratic Revolutionary Front. Many shops heeded the government's request to stay open. Others defied it.

Public services in the capital, such as the transport system, continued operations as normal though there were smaller crowds to deal with. Government workers were warned they wouldn't be paid if they joined the strike.

As the protest got underway the body of a rich businessman kidnapped last May was found in a truck. The police accused leftist guerrillas for his murder.

Elsewhere in the city, San Salvador's alarming rate of violence continued unabated. A spokesman for those who had called the strike had promised it would be accompanied by, in his words, "guerrilla attacks wherever necessary." He said it would be a preclude to planned insurrection. The Government maintained that the call to strike had been a failure and said it was a sign of support for the five-member junta. Troops stormed houses suspected of sheltering terrorists and made several arrests.

The miliary also broke into several unoccupied houses in the outer suburbs of San Salvador and confiscated equipment belonging to terrorist groups.

Later a group of soldiers tried on a red mask taken in the raid.

Political violence, which has spilt from the cities into remote country areas, has accounted for the deaths of over three thousand people in El Salvador this year. Over the period of the strike alone, at least 64 people were killed.