The World - News from May 30, 1986

The New York-based human rights organization Americas Watch said that killings or disappearances linked to politics in El Salvador last year numbered nearly 2,000, a figure it said was relatively low compared to some previous years. It said U.S.-trained armed forces and rightist death squads were responsible for 1,740 killings or disappearances. It blamed leftist guerrillas for 173 such incidents. In 1981, at the height of the civil war, 13,000 people were killed out of El Salvador’s population of 5 million, Americas Watch said.