SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras – The massacre of 28 people on a public bus a week ago may have been the work of antigovernment revolutionaries and not gang members as the government has asserted, according to several people here.

“It was horrible,” said Pedro Alexander, 25, who lives a few steps from the site of the massacre and heard the rapid bursts from the assault rifles and screams of the victims, including women and children.

“But I don’t believe the killers were members of the gangs. That’s what a lot of people believe. I don’t get involved with those gangs, but I know them and everybody knows who they are. Those assassins knew what they were doing. It was a well-planned and well-executed massacre, not something the gangs are known for,” Alexander said.

The shooting occurred just after 7 p.m. Dec. 23 in Chamelecon, a rough sector of San Pedro Sula, about 125 miles north of Tegucigalpa, the capital.

The attackers chose a spot along the bus route where they knew the lumbering yellow school bus would be forced to slow to a crawl. The stretch of muddy road has standing water almost knee deep and large potholes.

The attackers boxed in the bus with their vehicles and opened fire. Passengers who left the bus and ran were gunned down on the street. In addition to the dead, 28 of the 70 passengers were wounded.

Investigators have blamed the massacre on ruthless gangs on a revived campaign to foment fear, dismissing notions that the attackers were part of some emerging guerrilla group.

On Wednesday, Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said the government knows the name of the gang leader responsible for the attack, but he declined to identify him. Nine gang members are already in custody in connection with the shootings.

All evidence points to Mara Salvatrucha, a gang that has terrorized Honduras with killings, rapes, kidnappings, drug trafficking and extortion for more than five years, said Vice Minister of Security Armando Calidonio.

There are 20,000 to 100,000 gang members in Honduras, but a steady government crackdown has quelled their illegal activities, Calidonio said.

He told The Miami Herald he understands why the public believes there’s more to the shooting.

“The persons who did this lamentable act left a large note saying they were members of a guerrilla group called Cinchoneros,” Calidonio said. “That information was publicly announced, and now people appear to be taking it as fact. After we analyzed the situation, we can categorically say it’s not a guerrilla group. It was the gangs that did this cowardly assassination.”

In the note, scribbled on a long red sheet of paper, the assailants claimed they belonged to the Cinchonero People’s Liberation Movement, a guerrilla group that operated in the 1980s during El Salvador’s civil war. The group also was active in Honduras and was thought to have disappeared with the end of the Cold War.

The note made death threats against President Ricardo Maduro, a wealthy businessman who rose to national office vowing to be tough on crime after his son was kidnapped and killed.

The note also warned against reinstating the death penalty, which has been sought by several candidates for national office to curtail gang violence.

The government didn’t help quash the rumblings that the country was on the brink of a revolution when it dispatched military units on foot patrols, tanks and other armored vehicles to the streets after the attack.

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Dilma Altamirano, 34, a homemaker, said there was a similar attack on a bus in Chamelecon that left four people dead earlier this year.

“People are afraid to ride the buses,” she said.

And there have been several other recent threats and armed attacks on government convoys, prompting Maduro to increase his and his family’s security detail.

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Many Hondurans say they believe the attack is likely part of an emerging rebel movement that is seeking political and social change. The rebellion, they say, aims to bring down a political and social structure that is corrupt, benefits politicians, their families, friends and the very rich, and confines the masses to a life of indentured servitude and poverty.

But some political experts say they have doubts about residents’ assertions that guerrillas were behind the attack.

“The conditions that would allow a guerrilla group to launch in Honduras simply does not exist,” said Isbela Orellana, head of social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. “It’s not possible.”

Anibal Delgado Fiallos, also a social sciences professor at the college’s regional campus in San Pedro Sula, said individuals other than the gangs – but not guerrillas – are likely behind the massacre.

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(c) 2004, The Miami Herald.

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AP-NY-12-29-04 2142EST