OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Saturday 5.30pm.
FIVE people were killed late on Friday in a gun attack on a vehicle travelling along Namibia’s border with Angola, near where three French children were killed on January 3, Namibian police said on Saturday.
The five dead are believed to have been Namibians working for the Ministry of Health, a police officer at the northern border town of Rundu said.
He said the attack took place at 5pm on Friday in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip area, near to where the French children were killed and their parents wounded by gunmen, apparently members of the Angolan rebel movement UNITA, who raked their vehicle with gunfire.
The officer said four people died on the spot in Friday’s attack while another died later in Rundu hospital.
The incident took place near Divundu, some 200km east of Rundu. At least four others were wounded in the attack on a Toyota Venture minibus.
Police spokesman in Windhoek, Chief Inspector Hophni Hamufungu, confirmed the attack but said details were sketchy.
“It looks like the same as last time (the attack on the French tourists) with the gunmen firing at the vehicle then disappearing back into Angola. The main road at that point is only six kilometres from the border,” he said.
The Namibian government blamed the January 3 attack, in which two aid workers were also wounded, on the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), headed by rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
Windhoek has been assisting the Angolan government’s drive against Unita by allowing Angolan troops to launch attacks from within Namibia’s northeastern border. — AFP