Luanda | Wednesday
ANGOLAN rebels have launched a deadly ambush only days after the killing of their leader, media reports said on Tuesday, clouding efforts by the country’s president to end nearly three decades of civil war.
Nine people were killed and 15 seriously wounded in the attack on Monday, the first by Unita rebels since Jonas Savimbi was slain by Angolan government forces last Friday, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported.
The death of the charismatic Savimbi, who had led his rebels in a brutal civil war since Angola achieved independence from Portugal in 1975, has raised international hopes of restoring peace to the southern African nation.
News of the attack broke as Angola’s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was in Washington for talks with his Mozambique and Botswana counterparts and US President George W. Bush on the situation in Angola and other African issues.
“We committed to achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible and also to facilitate the normalization of the political situation in Angola,” Dos Santos said through an interpreter after the White House meeting.
The Angolan leader also said he hoped to hold elections “as soon as we have security” and offered to make room for Unita on the country’s political landscape.
“As a party, Unita has room. But we won’t allow Unita to have a private army,” he noted.
Bush said: “President dos Santos has it within his power to end 26 years of fighting by reaching out to all Angolans willing to lay down their arms. Angolans deserve no less.”
More than 500 000 people have died in the war, according to the most conservative estimates, and more than one third of the nation’s 12-million people have been displaced.
Meanwhile, in Lisbon, a representative for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) said Savimbi’s deputy Antonio Dembo had assumed leadership of the guerrilla group.
Dembo has already made contact with “certain commanders in the country, probably to reorganize the party, and so he feels more at ease,” Carlos Morgado told the Portuguese news agency Lusa late Tuesday.
Savimbi’s death had left Unita split over its successor, with the faction closest to the slain rebel leader supporting Dembo.
General Eugenio Manuvakola, who heads a dissident faction of Unita, has already tried to declare himself the new chief, a move greeted by opposition even within his own ranks.
In Monday’s attack, Unita gunmen attacked a truck carrying about 50 civilians, soldiers and police in bushland in the northern province of Malange, Lusa said.
“They attacked the driver and the truck overturned, leading several people dead and injured,” Lusa quoted a survivor as saying. “Other passengers have gone missing after fleeing into the bush.”
The Angolan government plans a “massive campaign” of leaflet drops in rebel areas calling on them to heed the ceasefire call and become integrated into the army, Lusa quoted an Angolan military source as saying.
The leaflets will carry a picture of the body of the 67-year-old Savimbi, who was killed in battle in Moxico province on Friday, the source said.
Few wars in Africa have taken a more tragic toll than Angola’s ideological battle-turned-scramble for mineral wealth, and the international community has called on both sides to use Savimbi’s death as a chance to jumpstart the peace process that fell apart in 1994.
Dos Santos, speaking in Lisbon on Monday after talks with Portuguese counterpart Jorge Sampaio, had voiced hope for elections within two years if the rebels handed in their weapons and committed to a ceasefire.
Portugal, the former colonial power, has denied any hand in the Angolan army operation which killed Savimbi after a Unita representative claimed that Israeli, Portuguese and South African troops helped Angolan forces find the rebel leader. – AFP
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