Word: bunkers
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...risen when the blue-and-white presidential helicopter took off from the hills above Managua. It hovered over a heavily fortified complex in the heart of the war-torn capital and flicked on its landing lights. For the last time, President Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle gazed down upon the bunker that had been his combination home and command post for the past 20 months. Then the chopper alighted at Las Mercedes Airport, where Somoza's private jet was standing by. Moments later, the wan and pasty-faced dictator, drooping with fatigue, was on his way into exile...
...burly dictator actually had begun the week like a tiger, directing the battle against the Sandinistas from his concrete bunker in the country's ravaged capital of Managua. In effect, he was trying to buy bargaining time with firepower, but without much success. Early in the week, guerrilla forces added the strategic highway town of Sebaco to their growing list of occupied places. They also destroyed the last national guard garrison in Matagalpa and closed in on Chinandega, one of two major cities in northern Nicaragua not controlled by the rebels. In a desperate attempt to break the Sandinista...
...junta, State Department negotiators found themselves watched closely by the dictator's congressional supporters, in one case literally. Two weeks ago, when Ambassador Pezzullo called upon Somoza to press for his resignation, the diplomat was surprised to meet New York Democrat John M. Murphy in the bunker office. Murphy, who first befriended the Nicaraguan 40 years ago when they were classmates at a Long Island military academy, is the dictator's staunchest supporter in the House. Murphy went to Managua at his friend's request and attended the meeting between Pezzullo and Somoza. "The issue...
...broadcasts from his bunker, Somoza last week declared that he was "ready to resist until my death"; not so his long-time mistress, Dinorah Sampson, who flew to one of Somoza's many properties in southern Florida. Although it has suffered heavy casualties, the 12,000-man national guard is getting weapons and ammunition from Honduras and Guatemala, and remains more than a match for the rebels in any conventional shootout. But there are faint stirrings of discontent within the guard, which at this point is the only significant segment of Nicaraguan society that backs the dictator. Said...
Sealed inside his bunker, Somoza seems unperturbed by that prospect or by the growing bitterness of the civil war. Both sides have begun summary executions of captured opponents or suspected informers. Missionaries picking through the rubble in Managua last week discovered the bodies of ten young men. They had been bound, tortured and mutilated by national guardsmen, the missionaries said...