OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 7.45pm.
A SPOKESMAN for Angolan separatists said on Friday that government troops supported by attack helicopters are advancing on an unknown number of Front for the Liberation Of Cabinda (FLEC) separatists in the country’s oil-rich enclave of Cabinda.
Carlos Puna said that a battalion of 400 Angolan soldiers began an offensive on September 28 and are battling the guerrillas in the jungle in eastern areas of the coastal enclave. He did not give any casualty figures, but said that many people have been killed in the fighting.
An unidentified Angolan army source has confirmed that military operations are underway in several parts of Cabinda but said no major offensive had been launched.
Cabinda is a 7,000-square-km piece of Angolan territory wedged between Congo and the Republic of Congo, north of Angola and the Congo River. Western oil companies operate oil platforms off the Cabindan coast and have bases in the enclave’s coastal capital, also called Cabinda.
A heavy Angolan security contingent in the capital has kept the separatists in remote inland areas since they launched their fight for independence two decades ago in the wake of Angola’s independence from Portugal.
Meanwhile, A former political adviser to Unita leader Jonas Savimbi, Abel Chivukuvuku, said on Friday that gunmen fired on his car in Luanda. However, neither he nor his family were in the vehicle at the time.
Chivukuvuku said that nobody was hurt in the incident, in which the assailants apparently used guns equipped with silencers. He believes the motive for the attack, which he said was organised by the Luanda government, is a way of pressuring him to back a breakaway Unita faction known as the renewal committee.
Twelve people died in two separate anti-tank mine explosions in the south and east of Angola on Thursday. The first blast occurred in Chamutete, southern Angola, killing four people and injuring six.
The second device exploded under a convoy in the region of Busasu north of the town of Lwena, capital of Moxico province, killing eight people and injuring 16.