Key Salvador Leftist Accuses Army of Murder : Central America: Zamora calls three killings ‘political assassinations.’ The military denies the charge and says the three died ‘in a confrontation’ with soldiers.

SAN SALVADOR —  Leftist leader Ruben Zamora on Wednesday accused the army of killing two members of his small Popular Social Christian Movement and dumping their bullet-riddled bodies along with a third victim in the western provincial capital of Sonsonate.

The killings are the latest in a three-week wave of political violence that has taken the lives of at least 17 civilians since the U.S.-backed government of President Alfredo Cristiani and leftist guerrillas held peace talks in Costa Rica last month.

Zamora said the latest victims were discovered near a public cemetery in Sonsonate, about 40 miles west of the capital, with an unsigned note that said, “For betraying the fatherland.”

The army issued a statement that two unidentified men died near a Sonsonate cemetery “in a confrontation” with soldiers. But Zamora called the killings “political assassinations.”

“Our experience when someone is shot in the forehead is that it was not a military confrontation but an illegal execution,” Zamora said.

The most serious incident in the recent surge of violence was the Oct. 31 bombing of a crowded union hall, the headquarters of the Salvadoran National Workers’ Federation in San Salvador, that left 10 people dead and 29 wounded. The same day, another bomb exploded at the office of Comadres, a group of relatives of political prisoners and people who have disappeared in the civil war. Four were injured there.

Leaders of those groups accused the military of ordering the bombings in retaliation for an Oct. 30 mortar attack by Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebels on the Defense Ministry headquarters. One civilian was killed and 15 were wounded in that attack.

The rebels suspended peace talks with the government after the bombings, and the next day their urban commandos fired mortars at the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Brigade in the capital, killing one civilian.

Since then, the army has been in a state of alert and residents of the capital have been skittish in anticipation of a large-scale military response from the rebels.

Armed forces spokesmen deny any military involvement in the bombings, and Cristiani has formed an independent commission to monitor a government investigation into the attack. The commission has no power to investigate on its own.

Salvadoran and U.S. officials clearly are worried about the escalation of violence and deteriorating political situation. Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, and Gen. Maxwell Thurman, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, made an unscheduled visit to El Salvador on Monday to show U.S. support for the right-wing Cristiani government and to warn the military that the violence serves the interests of the guerrillas.

According to a U.S. official, Aronson told the Salvadoran high command that whoever bombed the union headquarters “is the enemy of the armed forces you guys say you represent. . . . This sort of thing gives us even more problem with our assistance package when it is debated in Congress.”

Aronson also met with leaders of the union, called Fenastras, and of opposition political parties, who told them that the military rather than Cristiani is in control of the government.

The current violence began on Oct. 17 when unidentified gunmen assassinated Isabel Casanova Vejar, 23, the daughter of an army colonel. The army has blamed guerrillas for the assault.

The following night, unidentified men threw a bomb into Ruben Zamora’s house and three grenades into the house next door.

Two of Zamora’s bodyguards were injured, but Zamora, his wife and five children were unharmed. He has since sent his three youngest children out of the country.

Zamora, who lived in exile for seven years after his brother was assassinated in 1980, is a member of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, a political coalition allied to the Farabundo Marti guerrillas. He returned from exile in 1987 to legalize his Social Christian Party.

Although party organizers have received many threats, this is the first time any have been killed.

Zamora said the party’s Sonsonate coordinator, Cecilio Rivera Rodriguez, and Apolinario Miranda, a member of its youth group, left the party office at 7:30 p.m. Monday, but neither arrived home. He said their bodies were found Tuesday and that Rivera Rodriguez had been shot in the forehead, eye and chest with an M-16 automatic rifle, the army’s standard issue.

The army’s press statement said that two robbers died in a shoot-out with troops from the 6th Military Detachment after they were caught robbing and raping the owner of a store.

Zamora said the army was smearing the names of the dead.

“We totally reject these type of accusations. We accuse the 6th Military Detachment and the Salvadoran army for this political assassination of two colleagues from our party,” he said.

Zamora noted that on Nov. 1, troops killed Julio Bonito Escalante, a member of a leftist farming cooperative in nearby Ahuachapan province, and then claimed he had died in battle. Witnesses, however, say Bonito was abducted by soldiers from a dance.

According to human rights organizations, more than 70,000 people have been killed in the 10-year-old civil war, most of them civilians.

The extreme right is blamed for most of the killings, but in the last year, the rebels have stepped up their urban warfare and have been responsible for several killings. On Nov. 3, the brother of former Deputy Defense Minister Col. Reynaldo Lopez Nuila was shot at a San Salvador gas station.

The same day, a bomb exploded in the house of Col. Orlando Carranza, the commander of an elite army battalion, but no one was injured.

On Monday, a mortar destroyed a police car at a roadblock on one of San Salvador’s main boulevards.