Cuba Says Rebels Number Only 50

Regime Asserts Castro Force Seeks to Flee—Voiding of People’s Rights Expires

By R. Hart Phillips

Special to The New York Times

HAVANA, Saturday, March 2 – Rebel forces under Fidel Castro in Sierra Maestra of Oriente Province have been reduced to about fifty men, the Cuban Army said yesterday.

The announcement from Army headquarters at Camp Columbia here said the Government expected to terminate military operations in Oriente Province shortly.

Constitutional guarantees for the Cuban people were restored at midnight last night with the expiration of a forty-five-day period of suspension.

However, President Fulgencio Batista and his Cabinet went into session almost immediately to consider the possibility of again suspending these guarantees throughout the island.Dr. Anselmo Alliegro, president of the Senate, said yesterday after a visit to the President that he did not see how the Government could permit their restoration while a terroristic campaign continued.

The statement on the rebels was given to the press early yesterday by Maj. Policarpo Chaviano, chief of the Army Press and Radio Bureau.It said that since the first part of February Señor Castro had divided his men into groups of two or three in an attempt to escape from the troop-encircled mountains.

Señor Castro has only twenty men left of the original eighty-two who landed in his revolutionary expedition on the south coast of Oriente Province last Dec. 2, the statement asserted.

The remainder of the fifty are local residents who have joined the rebel leader or have been forced to fight with the rebels, Major Chaviano said.

Since the situation in the Sierra Maestra district has been virtually normalized.President Batista has ordered initiation of a plan to construct homes for rural families and repair the present ones as well as build schools, the statement said.Also, mobile medical units will be sent into the mountains to care for persons under this plan, it added.

The statement went on to say the truce given to the rebels by the Government last December so that all could surrender had been extended at the petition of the mother of Señor Castro and plans had been made with the consent of President Batista for Señor Castro and his brother to emerge from the mountains and seek asylum in some foreign embassy preparatory to leaving Cuba.

However, Señor Castro violated the truce, the statement said, and killed eleven soldiers while they were sleeping in three huts near La Plata.The Government then sent in large contingents of troops to kill or capture the rebels.

Reports from Manzanillo in Oriente Province said the army was using artillery in attacking rebel strongholds in the mountains and clashes had occurred in the last few days at La Gloria, Bueycito, La Herradura, El Macho, San Lorenzo, Estrada Palma and near Niquero.

Seemed to Control Mountain

When Fidel Castro was interviewed by Herbert L. Matthews, a correspondent of The New York Times, in the Sierra Maestra mountains on Feb. 17 he had about forty men with him.This included his “Estado Mayor” or Chiefs of Staff.He would not say how many troops he had but informed guesses placed the number around 90 or 100.

According to Mr. Matthews, Señor Castro was not aware of any special offensive launched against him by the Army and, in fact, he considered himself to be on the offensive.The indications in the Sierra and in the surrounding territory pointed to the fact that Señor Castro, not the Government, controlled the mountain range.