July, was market-day in Rabinal. The pathways and roads of the municipality were, from an early hour, crowded with people from local villages and farms taking their goods to market. The village of Plan de Sánchez was one of several settlements crisscrossed by the network of routes leading to the municipal seat. At around 08:00 that Sunday morning, soldiers at the military detachment fired two 105-mm mortar shells at the village. One of these landed to the east of the main group of houses; the other to the west. Later that same day, between 14:00 and 15:00, a military detachment arrived in Plan de Sánchez. This force of some 60 men – comprising regular army (led by a captain and a lieutenant), PAC patrolmen, police, and civilians dressed in military fatigues and armed with assault rifles – took up stations at the village's points of entry and exit, heading off people from other settlements returning from market. Others went from house to house, gathering the inhabitants together. At this point, some of the men succeeded in fleeing the round-up and took to the surrounding woods and hills. The younger women were sent to one house, with the men, children, and older women directed to another. A group of around twenty of the younger women (aged between 12 and 20) were separated from the main group and taken to another building; there, they were humiliated, accused of supporting the guerrillas, beaten, and raped. A handful of these women managed to escape and take refuge in the surrounding countryside, while the remainder were killed. The children were separated from the main group and beaten and kicked to death. Then, at around 17:00, the soldiers threw two hand grenades into the house where the adults were being held and began spraying the walls with automatic gunfire. Residents of nearby villages and those from Plan de Sánchez who was observing the massacre from vantage points in the surrounding hills report that intense gunfire continued until about 20:00 when the army set fire to the buildings. The armed forces finally left the village at around 23:00. The next morning, some of those who had fled returned to the smoking ruins of their village. None of the bodies in the houses could be identified; many of the others who had fallen in the yards adjacent to the houses had bullet holes in their heads, chests, and