"Thousands Flee Angola”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29554, 1 July 1961, Page 11

"Thousands Flee Angola”

<RZ. Prets Association—Copyright)

LONDON. June 30 One hundred thousand people “trapped in Angola between the twin terrors of guerrilla war and reprisals by Portuguese troops" have fled across the frontier and were sheltering last night In the Lower Congo, according to the “Daily Mail” today. The newspaper's correspondent in Moerbeke. in the Con®>. said: "They have brought the first full account' of the horror which has left, thousands of square miles of their country empty of all! human life except the cld and the sick.

I ’They told of savagery from terrorists if they refused to ‘co-operate,’ and crushing attacks by the Portuguese forces if they were! suspected of aiding the rebels.l "The guerrillas have burned coffee plantations, destroyed bridges and blocked roads They have ambushed convoys from the cover of grass more than head high and made night attacks on villages they need for temporary shelter or whose inhabitants refused to join them "The Portuguese replied with heavily armed ground raids and air bombardment ;in which there is evidence ithat napalm bombs have been used Many refugees told me. of bombs which must have’

been full of petrol and set the village and the ground on fire all around.” “In this area alone. 40.000 people are spread out in a vast arc stretching south to the border town of Kimpangu and west to Kimpese “Most are penniless and living on meagre rations of rice and dried fish. Some are dying, many are in the extremes of fatigue and debility. Others lie mutilated or burned in hospital beds. “The pattern of their stories is invariably the same: a round-up. indiscriminate arrests, shootings, bayoneting, the roar of aircraft bombings and machine-gunning the ; flimsy houses,” the “Daily 'Mail" correspondent said.