14 including me, to the home of Israel Marquez, and when I got there I saw the house was full of dead bodies of the people they had taken away, and there was blood all over the floor. When they saw such atrocity, the women, except me, hugged each other, shouting, weeping and begging the soldiers not to kill them. At that point the soldiers turned to the woman and told them, “don’t cry ladies, here comes the devil, he’ll take you”. And while the soldiers were dealing with the hysterical women, I slipped away into a little clump of bushes (...) and I managed to hide there for the whole afternoon, where I could see the group of women that had been with me. They were taken into the house of Israel Marquez and machine-gunned, and then I saw when they took the last group of women and killed them with machine guns. The last group of women that the soldiers brought had 48 the children with them, and at about 7 p.m. they were also shot. 64. Before they were killed, several of the younger women were taken to the outskirts of the village, specifically to the hills of El Chingo and La Cruz, where the soldiers raped them. According to the report of the Tutela Legal, several soldiers said that during the El Mozote operation they had raped many 49 young women before killing them. 65. The bodies of those killed were piled up in various dwellings and burned by the soldiers. When the chapel was set on fire there were still wounded people inside it, and we could hear shouting 50 and wailing. 66. As indicated, Rufina Amaya was one of a group of women who had been assembled and 51 during the massacre she managed to flee and hide . From her hiding place, while the home of Israel Marquez was burning, she could hear soldiers talking in the following terms: “we’ve killed all the adults, but there are still the kids that we rounded up, and we don’t know what to do with them, whether to kill them or what. But hey, some of the kids are cute and maybe we could take them with us.” Another soldier replied, “but look, you know that we are acting on orders, the Colonel’s orders are to kill everyone here, 52 because this is a scorched-earth operation. If you won’t kill the kids, we’ll have to do it.” 48 Statement of Rufina Amaya before the Tutela Legal on October 10, 1990 (annexed to the initial petition of October 30, 1990). The statement of Mrs. Rufina Amaya was also cited in a report by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (IDHUCA). See IDHUCA report, Consideraciones sobre la impunidad a propósito de la masacre del El Mozote (“Considerations on Impunity with Respect to the El Mozote Massacre”), No. 451 of November 7, 1990. 49 Tutela Legal, op. cit. 50 Tutela Legal, op. cit. According to Rufina Amaya, “at that time, when they had killed all the adults, some 400 persons, they set fire to the chapel, to the home of Isidra Claros, José Maria Marquez and Israel Marquez, which were all full of dead bodies.” See: Statement of Rufina Amaya before the Tutela Legal on October 10, 1990 (annexed to the initial petition of October 30, 1990). The statement of Mrs. Rufina Amaya was also cited in a report by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (IDHUCA). See IDHUCA report, Consideraciones sobre la impunidad a propósito de la masacre del El Mozote (“Considerations on Impunity with Respect to the El Mozote Massacre”), No. 451 of November 7, 1990. 51 Rufina Amaya described her experience over the next few days in the following terms: “I buried my face and wept bitterly over the death of my children, and so the soldiers would not hear me weeping. At that time I felt no physical pain, only the great pain in my heart which would not even let me pass water.(...). On December 16 of the year I heard the voices of two children she knew, the daughters of a lady named Matilda who lived in the village of Jocote Amarillo, Guacamaya Canton. So I went down the road to their house to see them and then, when the girls saw me, they were frightened and they cried out to their mother, “mommy, there’s Rufina Amaya”, and then Mrs. Matilda del Cid (...) came to me and asked about my family, because her brothers lived in El Mozote. I told her: “I think everyone died because they killed even my children”, and then we both began to cry and then Matilda took me to a cave where the family was hiding. (...) I went with the other families to the Colomoncagua refuge in Honduras, where I spent eight years (...) until February 14, 1990.” See: Statement of Rufina Amaya before the Tutela Legal on October 10, 1990 (annexed to the initial petition of October 30, 1990). The statement of Mrs. Rufina Amaya was also cited in a report by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (IDHUCA). See IDHUCA report, Consideraciones sobre la impunidad a propósito de la masacre del El Mozote (“Considerations on Impunity with Respect to the El Mozote Massacre”), No. 451 of November 7, 1990. 52 Tutela Legal. The mass executions in El Mozote and neighboring locales, July 23, 1992 (Annex A to the petitioners’ communication of November 11, 2002). Statement of Rufina Amaya before the Tutela Legal on October 10, 1990 (annexed to the initial petition of October 30, 1990). The statement of Mrs. Rufina Amaya was also cited in a report by the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University José Simeón Cañas (IDHUCA). See IDHUCA report, Consideraciones sobre la impunidad a propósito de la masacre del El Mozote (“Considerations on Impunity with Respect to the El Mozote Massacre”), No. 451 of November 7, 1990.