A Mexican soldier was accidentally shot and killed by another soldier during a military operative in the mountains outside Acapulco, officials said yesterday.

Jesus Salas Blanco, 23, was shot in the back late Saturday and died shortly after, federal police spokeswoman Guadalupe Martinez said.

An army official said the accidental shooting occurred during an operation in Cordon Grande, a remote town whose residents have allegedly been recruited by members of the leftist People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR.

The crew of a Coast Guard plane dropped their lunches to a drifting tanker Saturday after a dog left aboard the abandoned ship 18 days earlier was seen running around the deck, a spokesman said.

The crew believed their food drop to the Insiko 1907 was successful, Petty Officer David Mosley said.

The Coast Guard had been searching for the Insiko to determine if it posed an environmental hazard to Johnston Island, about 825 miles southwest of Honolulu, Mosley said. The crew of the C-130 spotted it 250 miles east of Johnston, and the Coast Guard notified a salvage company.

The Indonesian tanker was disabled by a fatal fire March 13 that killed one crewman and cut off power and communications. The crew was rescued April 2 by a cruise liner south of Hawaii, but the captain's 2-year-old dog, Forgea, was left aboard.

The Hawaiian Humane Society quickly mounted a $50,000 rescue effort for Forgea, but the air-and-sea search ended April 7 when the tanker couldn't be found.

A fishing vessel spotted the ship again April 12, and the society contacted another fishing boat in hopes of saving the dog, but the crew couldn't find the tanker.

After the spotting Saturday, Lt. j.g. Mia Dutcher said the Coast Guard reported the tanker's position to American Marine Corp., the salvage company the society hired to find the ship and rescue the dog.

A York County woman died 10 days after learning that her grandson had been released due to DNA evidence after more than a decade in an Arizona prison.

Ray Krone, a former postal worker from Dover, Pa., said he had hoped to speak with Bertna Mae Krone by telephone after he was released from the state prison in Yuma on April 8, but she was too ill.

"Grandma knew I was out of prison," Krone said Friday. "At least she knew that happened."

Bertna Mae Krone, 93, who died Thursday at her Dover Township home, was happy that her grandson was out of prison, said his father, Dale Krone Sr.

"She knew all along it was wrong to have him in there," he said.

Krone said he would not come to Dover Township for his grandmother's funeral, which is scheduled for today. His brother, Dale Krone Jr., also in Arizona, will not return either, said his sister, Amy Wilkinson.

Ray Krone remains on probation, still under indictment in the 1991 murder of 36-year-old Kim Ancona, a bartender at the CBS Restaurant Lounge in Phoenix, and is not allowed to leave the state without special permission.

His mother, Carolyn Leming, said the money for the flight was another factor.

Krone and his family had hoped that Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley might drop the murder charges against him before an April 29 hearing, where testimony about new evidence in the case will be presented.