Press: A Murder in Managua .

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Guard riflemen fired on TIME'S Richard Woodbury and two Associated Press newsmen, despite the fact that their car was covered with press markings. Freelance Cameraman Carl Hersch was driving in the city of Esteli when national guardsmen opened fire without warning; his passengers were wounded. The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung, the Chicago Tribune's Mark Starr and two Brazilian reporters escaped a mortar attack on the guerrilla-held town of Leon. In Managua last week, TIME Mexico City Bureau Chief Bernard Diederich and three other reporters were caught in an artillery bombardment as they attempted to keep a rendezvous with Sandinista leaders. Says the Baltimore Sun's Gilbert Lewthwaite: "It's Russian roulette. Everybody is trigger happy. You don't know where your enemy is or whom they're firing at."

With the risks rising daily, about a third of the foreign newsmen, including all but one of the American networks' 24 representatives, were airlifted out of the country late last week. For them, the balance between their job and their personal safety had tipped under the weight of Bill Stewart's murder. Said ABC Producer Ken Lucoff: "No story is worth a man's life."

Early Friday morning, the Inter-Continental's valiant staff abandoned the hotel after the Sandinistas declared it a military target. The remaining correspondents split up into small groups and sought accommodations elsewhere in the city. Fending for themselves might prove more difficult, but it could scarcely be any more tense. They had shared the Inter-Continental with rancorous government officials and pistol-packing Somoza sycophants, who spent their days drinking morosely and blaming the foreign press for their troubles.

At week's end Bill Stewart's body was flown back to Ashland, Ky., his widow's home town, for funeral services. The national guard arrested a corporal for the murder, but he claimed Stewart was shot by a private who was killed in action later that day.

Ironically, the Nicaraguan rebellion erupted into civil war early last year after the assassination of another journalist, Pedro Joaquín Chamarro Cardenal, editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. Stewart's death, which has seriously diminished the Somoza government's dwindling international support, may turn out to be equally decisive.