SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- Leftist guerrillas bombed El Salvador's most important bridge Thursday in a dramatic blow to the U.S.-backed junta on the day it was celebrating its second anniversary in power.
The bombing overshadowed an announcement by Vice President and armed forces Commander-in-Chief Jaime Abdul Gutierrez that a night-time curfew imposed 10 months ago as part of a martial law decree was being lifted.
Some 300 guerrillas about midnight staged a four-pronged attack on the bridge, pouring submachine gun fire at guard outpost on both ends of the crossing and firing from the river banks at guards patrolling the structure.
Rebel sappers slipped up to the bridge in a tiny boat and planted huge dynamite charges on the pillars supporting the structure.
The explosion knocked nearly the entire 1,000-yard-long structure into the roaring Lempa River and heaving chunks of concrete and steel into the houses along the river banks.
Military officias said at least two soldiers were killed and eight were seriously wounded. They gave no information on guerrilla losses.
The Public Works ministry estimated damage at $8 million and said it would take several years to rebuild the bridge.
'This criminal act is directed at the Salvadoran people because to destroy the bridge blocks the transit of vehicles, raising costs by complicating transportation of agricultural and industrial products,' Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez, addressing a rally marking the second anniversary of the coup ousted rightist President Carlos Humberto Romero, blamed 'foreign saboteurs' for the bombing.
The bridge, one of only two spanning the Rio Lempa River dividing El Salvador, has long been a rebel target. Their success this time represented a significant propaganda and economic blow to the junta.
The Puente de Oro -- Bridge of Gold -- on the southern coastal highway carried much more commercial and private traffic than the Cuscutlan Bridge on the Pan American Highway some 20 miles to the north.
Gutierrez said the curfew enforced by troops with shoot-on-sight orders was being lifted 'as a sample of our will to stimulate a climate of peace and security in relation to the elections' for a constitutional assembly next March.
He also announced a new amnesty offer by the junta in a speech before a smaller-than-expected crowd of 30,000 spectators at San Salvador's Flor Blance soccer stadium. He said details of the offer would be announced later.
