1 Wooden doors hang ajar. Flies buzz on a mound of drying corn dough. A skinny dog whines at a gate. Nearly 1,200 people who supported Indian rebels lived here, but the loudest sound now is the breeze rustling through the banana trees.
2 More than 300 army troops, accompanied by two helicopters, rolled through this village Friday as part of its crackdown on the rebel movement in the southern state of Chiapas. Roughly 800 adults and 350 children fled into the jungle as they arrived.
3 'They left food on the table, lights on,' Abraham Castaneda of the National Nutrition Institute said Tuesday. 'Children were separated from their parents in their terror.'
4 'We heard the noise of the trucks, many of them,' said 23-year-old Maria Hernandez, one of perhaps 50 residents who remain here.
5 'Everyone was fleeing,' she said, holding her 7-month-old son, Cesar. 'I was trying to get together some diapers for my little one, and we were going to the road when we saw the army had already surrounded us.'
6 President Ernesto Zedillo's decision to crack down on the Zapatista National Liberation Army last week was billed as a non-violent effort to arrest Zapatista leaders and restore law and order in Chiapas.
7 But thousands of impoverished peasants who sympathized with rebel demands for Indian rights are taking no chances with the troops this time around.
8 Seven days after the Zapatistas surged out of the jungle to take Morelia and other nearby towns on New Year's Day 1994, the army entered.
9 Villagers alleged that the soldiers arrested three villagers, tortured them and dumped their bodies in the road.
10 The army denied the claims, but an extensive forensic investigation of the mens' remains by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights corroborated the villagers' claims they had been tortured and murdered.
11 The fear has worked both ways, however. About 25,000 refugees have been staying in special shelters in the area after fleeing villages controlled by the Zapatistas over the past year.
12 Many complained that the Zapatistas had taken their food or mistreated them.
13 Dr. Marcos Arana of Conpaz, an alliance of aid groups, said about 300 soldiers marched again through Morelia on Tuesday morning. He said they broke into the church, a health clinic, the community kitchen, the village meeting house and entered private homes.
14 Tears welled in the eyes of Francisco Luna Santiz, 64, as he sat on his porch and listlessly separated red coffee beans from green.
15 'I am all alone. I am so sad!' he said. 'There is nothing to eat but this banana here. I don't know what I'm going to do.'
16 Other villagers ran to their homes and slammed their doors when they spotted a foreign reporter and photographer in the street. Many refused to respond to knocks at their doors.
17 In a statement Monday, the retreating Zapatistas alleged the army dropped bombs and that soldiers raped women when they occupied the village, but the government denied the charges and no evidence of such acts was visible on Tuesday.
18 Some residents said they heard distant sounds of explosions Saturday night.

More than 300 army troops , accompanied by two helicopters , rolled through this village Friday as part of its crackdown on the rebel movement in the southern state of Chiapas . Roughly 800 adults and 350 children fled into the jungle as they arrived .
its crackdown on the rebel movement
Why was there a crackdown on the rebel movement?