San Salvador, January 31 (RHC)-- Retired Salvadoran General Juan Rafael Bustillo has acknowledged for the first time that elite United States-trained forces were responsible for carrying out the 1981 El Mozote massacre in which nearly 1,000 unarmed villagers were killed.  Most of those tortured and murdered by the U.S.-backed troops were women and children.

The admission comes as the U.S. State Department has banned 13 former Salvadoran military officials from entering the United States after they allegedly orchestrated the extrajudicial killings of six Jesuit priests in 1989.

Like the El Mozote massacre, the killing of the Jesuit priests was also carried out by soldiers trained by the United States.