In 2005, Guatemala formally apologized [JURIST report] for a separate government-ordered massacre that occurred during the country's civil war in July 1982, taking the lives of 226. Vice President Eduardo Stein made the acknowledgment in a small town north of Guatemala City, expressing remorse for the army's action that "wipe[d] out an entire community." The apology came in response to an order from the Inter-American Human Rights Court requiring an apology and payments to survivors totaling almost $8 million. Earlier that year, Guatemala's Constitutional Court ordered charges dropped [JURIST report] against soldiers accused of participating in a 1982 massacre of more than 300 civilians, citing the country's National Reconciliation Law. The law is a type of amnesty the Guatemalan Congress approved in November 1996, a few weeks before the government and ex-guerrillas signed peace accords ending the country's 36-year civil war. It forbids amnesty for those implicated in cases of forced disappearance, torture or genocide, but fails to address extra-judicial executions that took the lives of countless Guatemalans during the 36-year armed conflict.