MANUEL MUANZA, Luanda | Tuesday
ANGOLAN rebels, defying government peace overtures, launched a new attack on Monday, two days after an attack near the capital Luanda claimed some 100 lives, the Roman Catholic Ecclesia radio reported.
Residents in slums on the outskirts of Uije, capital of the northern province of the same name, fled into the city centre as rebel machinegun fire and mortar shells began exploding nearby, the private radio report said.
Ecclesia added that government troops repelled the attack by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).
Earlier on Monday, state television reported that Unita rebels killed about 100 people, mainly civilians, in an attack Saturday in Caxito, just 60km north of Luanda, with another 100 people missing.
Private radio stations in Caxito said the rebels abducted 60 children from a school run by the non-governmental organisation People’s Aid for the People, which said one of its teachers, Diogo Manuel, was killed.
The Angolan army said two soldiers and five police officers were wounded in the fighting, during which the rebels torched cars and riddled buildings with bullets, including the state radio headquarters.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Unita claimed to have killed 37 government soldiers and police in the fighting and seized large quantities of weapons.
Unita also said that “many hundreds” of people had fled the area, heading either for Luanda or other villages.
Attacks so close to the capital – defended by well-equipped joint patrols of army troops and special police – have been rare in Angola’s civil war, which has raged almost non-stop since its independence from Portugal in 1975.
The attacks came less than three weeks after the government, which has in recent years declared Unita leader Jonas Savimbi a wanted war criminal, invited him to join reconciliation talks.
Early last week President Jose Eduardo dos Santos asked Savimbi to give the government a date when the rebels would stop fighting.
The invitation to talks followed a decision by parliament to create a commission to find ways of achieving peace in the war-torn nation, to complement a national reconciliation talks under way since January between the government and civil society and church groups.
Interior Minister Fernando da Piedade Nando said Savimbi was “an Angolan citizen who has never been excluded from dialogue”.
However, he insisted that the guerrilla leader would have to agree to a unilateral ceasefire, recognise the Lusaka peace accord signed in November 1994, resolve internal divisions within Unita, and participate in elections.
Savimbi has expressed willingness to talks with Luanda, but Nando said the government was not ready to negotiate peace with rebels on new terms, suggesting that the Lusaka deal was the only alternative.
Caxito was practically deserted Monday, most residents having fled to Luanda, Ecclesia said. Many could be seen at Cacuaco, a coastal district of the capital.
State television said special police units were carrying out mopping-up operations in and around Caxito, located in a forested area where guerrillas find ready hideouts.
Unita has rear bases in Quibaxe, some 100km away.
The army said Unita troops had sought to destroy a bridge on the Dande river linking Caxito with the Ukwa district, which is of strategic importance in defending Bengo province, the gateway to Luanda.
Angola’s war, which resumed in earnest in 1998 after the collapse of a 1994 peace accord, has claimed at least 500_000 lives and has displaced some four million people out of a total population of 12 million.
Unita is under UN sanctions, which include a diamond trade embargo and travel restrictions on its leaders. – AFP