A court in Guatemala has sentenced three former government paramilitaries to death for their involvement in the killing of more than two-hundred-and-sixty people in 1982, many of them children.

The three men belonged to a death squad which tortured and murdered inhabitants of two villages.

It's the firsttime paramilitaries have faced capital punishment for their role in helping the army carry out a "scorched earth" policy to defeat left-wing rebels.

More than one hundred and forty thousand people were killed in the civil war; some four hundred and forty villages were totally destroyed.