/ 3 September 2001

29 DEAD, 50 HURT IN UNITA AMBUSH

TWENTY-nine people were killed and some 50 injured in an ambush on a civilian convoy in northern Angola blamed on the rebel Unita movement, the Lusa news agency said in Lisbon on Sunday. A minibus and two coaches were ambushed by assailants on a road some 50 kilometers from the seaside city of Sumbe, in the province of Cuanza Sul, Lusa reported quoting the Angolan news agency ANGOP. Those wounded in the attack, which took place on a road linking Sumbe and Gabela, were rushed to hospital in Sumbe. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) was also blamed for an ambush on Thursday which killed 12 Angolan soldiers along the same Sumbe-Gabela road. More than 250 people died on August 10 when a passenger train was attacked after being derailed by an anti-tank mine east of Luanda. Unita later claimed responsibility. Angola’s 26-year civil war resumed in earnest in 1998 after the collapse of a 1994 peace accord. It has claimed at least 500 000 lives and displaced some four million people out of a total population of 12 million. – AFP