On this day in 1982, the US-trained Atlacatl battalion massacred at least 200 civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, at El Calabozo, El Salvador. The soldiers then burned the bodies with acid and threw them in the river to cover up the atrocity. 
Atlacatl Battalion was an elite death squad trained at the US-run School of the Americas, which has trained many participants in US-backed coups, death squads, and campaigns of torture.
After several days and nights of bombing raids, villagers heard rumors that the military were sending in ground troops to finish them off. Thousands left in the area fled their homes, carrying their children and the small amount of food they could manage.
Eventually, the Atlacatl Battalion found the displaced group. The people shouted not to kill them because of the children. But the officer in charge gave the order that they had to shoot them.
The group was lined up and fired on at point-blank range, according to the survivors' account. Many of the women and girls were raped before being shot.
Felicita Albarado, a survivor of the massacre said, "The soldiers didn't leave anything or anyone - every person, dog, cow, seed and house was destroyed," she said. "We went looking for our people and found a river of blood.
One mother who survived the massacre described how the US-backed death squads abducted her son and forced him to become one of their child soldiers:
Two weeks after the massacre, the Salvadoran military told The Washington Post that it had investigated the case and found no evidence of a massacre. To this day, the Salvadoran military maintains this stance on the case.
The true number of people killed that day is unknown, since the battalion destroyed many of the bodes. To this day, the US has not assisted with justice for the victims or admitted its role in the massacre.
