Luanda | Thursday
UNITA rebels kidnapped 16 children who attending mass in a Roman Catholic church in Angola’s northern Kwanza-Norte province, Bishop Luis Escarpa said on Thursday, Radio Ecclesia reported.
Guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) burst into the church at Kiluanji as mass was being celebrated on Sunday, the bishop of the province told the church-run radio station.
The rebels made off with 16 girls and boys, aged mostly under 14.
Early this year, Unita abducted about 50 orphaned children from a training college run by the charity Humana People to People during an attack at Caxito, a town just 60 kilometres north of Luanda.
The children were freed a few days later and handed over to church authorities amid widespread alarm at rebel activity so close to the coastal capital in a conflict which has raged almost without cease since 1975.
The war between Jonas Savimbi’s Unita and the formerly Marxist regime in Luanda has claimed at least 500 000 lives, according to conservative estimates by UN and relief agency officials, while almost four million people have been displaced.
Some 100 000 others have been mutilated, mainly by mines strewn across the southern African country in the war since independence from Portugal. – Sapa-AFP ZA*NOW:
Where are the children? May 9, 2001
Unita kidnaps 60 Angolan kids May 8, 2001