Guatemala City - A Guatemalan truth commission said yesterday the army had blood on its hands for most of the atrocities committed in one of Latin America's longest and cruellest civil wars.
The long-awaited report also pointed an accusing finger at the CIA for sponsoring human rights violations and said US government policy until the mid-1980s had helped perpetuate the conflict.
In a hard-hitting speech, Mr Christian Tomuschat, head of the Historical Clarification Commission, blamed the army for 93 per cent of all massacres, tortures, disappearances and killings during Guatemala's bloody civil war.
Mr Tomuschat estimated that far more people had died in the civil war than previously thought. "We have come to the conclusion that the number of dead and disappeared as a result of this fratricidal confrontation comes to more than 200,000 people," he said. Earlier estimates put the number of dead at 150,000.