MEXICO CITY, June 9 (Reuters) - Human rights investigators rushed to Mexico's impoverished Guerrero state on Tuesday, where mountain communities were still reeling from a weekend shoot-out between soldiers and guerrillas that left 12 dead.

An army patrol surprised members of the Marxist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) sleeping in a school in the remote village of Ayutla early on Sunday, sparking a six-hour firefight. No soldiers were killed.

Juan Alarcon Hernandez, head of Guerrero state's Human Rights Commission, said two of his officials and six investigators from Mexico's national human rights body were on their way to the scene.

He said the events of Sunday morning were "very worrying" and that the observers would stay "as long as necessary" to hear complaints from witnesses.

Observers across Mexico questioned on Tuesday what some said looked like a shoot-to-kill operation.

"There was a decision to kill (the guerrillas), not to arrest them," Professor Lorenzo Meyer of the prestigious Colegio de Mexico told Reuters.

Television footage showed the wooden schoolhouse where the rebels were trapped riddled with bullets, and their bodies being dragged away in plastic bags. The death count rose to 12 on Tuesday, including four children, after another rebel died.

The EPR first appeared in Guerrero state in June 1996 at a rally to commemorate the first anniversary of a massacre at Aguas Blancas where state agents killed 17 peasant activists.

Sunday's violence was the worst since EPR guerrillas ambushed military bases in several states in August 1996, killing at least 10 people.

Witnesses in the nearby community of El Charco, about 170 miles (275 km) south of Mexico City, said hundreds of soldiers took part in the operation against a group of only about 15 guerrillas, suggesting it had been planned in advance.

They said the rebels were sleeping in the school, alongside an unspecified number of peasants from nearby villages, after holding a political meeting the day before.

Military sources and state attorney Servando Alanis said the dead belonged to either the EPR or to a newer offshoot known as the People's Insurgent Revolutionary Army (EPRI).

Commentators questioned why hundreds of soldiers were involved in an attack on a small group of guerrillas, and why the death toll was so high.

"Everything suggests that the action -- (at least) 11 people dead and not one soldier injured -- is the result of a high level political decision," La Jornada newspaper said in an editorial.

Right-wing National Action Party senator Francisco Molina Ruiz said he would ask for a report from the army.

State governor Angel Aguirre said he had tried to reach out to the rebels, but had been rebuffed.

"I proposed dialogue since the beginning but all I got was rejection on their part, and all we have met with is violence against the Mexican army."
 

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.