News In Brief

January 23, 1984

Three journalists released by Salvador rebel captors

Rebels belonging to El Salvador's most hard-line Marxist group held three journalists at a secret camp for three days before freeing them and 11 others who went to find them. None were harmed.

About 300 guerrillas of the Popular Liberation Forces, the largest of the nation's rebel organizations, released the journalists Friday from a sprawling camp in the mountains of Chalatenango Province, about 50 miles north of San Salvador.

Raul Beltrhan of United Press International and Pedro Garcia and Wilfredo Ponce, a cameraman and a soundman working for NBC-TV, were captured Tuesday when they crossed into a rebel-held zone while investigating a report that 107 insurgents had died in Air Force bombings. The report on the insurgents could not be substantiated.