45 VILLAGERS SLAUGHTERED IN MEXICO.

Byline: Trina Kleist Associated Press 

A column of gunmen descended on an Indian village, opened fire with AK-47s and hunted down those who tried to flee, including terrified mothers with babies. In all, 45 people were killed in southern Mexico's worst explosion of violence since a leftist uprising four years ago.

Word of the massacre, which occurred midday Monday, was spread Tuesday by survivors and peasant groups, who said about 70 gunmen loyal to a local faction of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party - some of them wearing state police uniforms - marched through the village firing indiscriminately.

The attack came as villagers were in church, praying for an end to the violence that has festered in impoverished Chiapas state.

``We were in the church praying when he heard the shots and everyone went running in every direction,'' said Juan Vazquez Luna, 15, whose mother, father and four sisters were killed. Three other siblings were wounded.

Villagers fled down the mountainside toward the river, they said. Women hauled babies in shawls. Men carried toddlers by the waist. People tripped on the undergrowth as they rushed down the hill.

The gunmen followed them, continuing to fire, witnesses said. Soon the packed earth along the river was covered in blood.

``They didn't respect anyone. Not old people, not children, nobody,'' said Ernesto Mendez Paciencia, an 18-year-old coffee farmer whose two brothers, 8 and 11, were killed.

Forty-five people were killed and 11 were wounded Monday in the massacre, Chiapas state Gov. Julio Cesar Ruiz said, making it the deadliest attack since members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army rebelled Jan. 1, 1994, to demand rights for Indians. Before a cease-fire took hold two weeks later, 145 people had died in the uprising.

Mauricio Rosas, director of the Red Cross office in San Cristobal, said the death toll was 42. He told the Mexico City radio station Formato 21 that the victims included 21 women, six men, 14 children and an infant.

The bodies - which were taken Tuesday to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital - had been shot and hacked with machetes, he said. The survivors were being cared for in San Cristobal, 12 miles south of Acteal.

In a nationally broadcast address Tuesday, President Ernesto Zedillo called the massacre ``an absurd criminal act.''

``There is no cause, no circumstance, that could justify this action,'' he said.

Zedillo called on the federal attorney general and the national human rights commission to investigate, and said no resource would be denied to them. He also said federal authorities would help the state government maintain order in the region, tacitly acknowledging the state government's inability to do so.

Survivors of the massacre blamed peasants from surrounding villages loyal to Zedillo's ruling party, known as the PRI. Since the rebellion began, villagers have aligned themselves with, and received backing and weapons from, either the PRI-led government or the rebels.

The split has a religious component as well. Many of the government supporters are Protestants; most of the rebel supporters are Roman Catholics who follow liberation theology, a social justice movement within the Catholic Church.

Survivors, all members of the pro-rebel Las Abejas peasant organization, said they recognized some of the attackers as members of PRI factions from nearby villages. Three survivors also said some of the gunmen wore the blue uniforms of the state police, with their insignia removed.

Meanwhile, organizations and people in the San Fernando Valley were devastated by news of the killings.

``I'm very saddened,'' said Xavier Flores, president of the Mexican American Political Association of the San Fernando Valley and executive director of Pueblo Y Salud, a San Fernando-based human services organization. ``I'm very angry.''

Mario Castellanos, a community advocate for Centro De Amistad, a mental health and social services nonprofit organization, studied the socioeconomic issues of Chiapas in 1979.

``It was something that was going to explode sooner or later, there is great poverty,'' Castellanos said.