Mercenaries To Mop Up

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30610, 28 November 1964, Page 15

Mercenaries To Mop Up

IN .Z .P .A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LEOPOLDVILLE, November 27.

Major Mike Hoare, commander of the white mercenaries battling with insurgents at Stanleyville, plans to lead his men over the Congo river today on a mopping-up operation.

But travellers returning from Stanleyville last night quoted a Belgian officer there as saying, “We don’t control anything more than a square mile in the centre of the city.”

Fierce fighting was reported in the 'European sector of Stanleyville, where Congolese insurgents, driven out by Belgian paratroops, counter-attacked yesterday, reoccupying part of the city.

There was also some fighting in one of the African sectors, and the situation remains tense.

Last night Major. Hoare said his men were resting before their planned dawn crossing of the Congo river to attack insurgents still sniping at them in the main town. The mercenaries, who are spearheading Congolese national army operations, also plan to attack an insurgent camp on the far bank. Cuban pilot mercenaries in Harvard aircraft rocketstrafed the far bank in a softening-up operation. Major Hoare plans to strike down-river for 20 or 30 miles where about 40 Belgians are still cut off.

A British United Nations official, named as Mr R. Latham, is also cut off some miles outside Stanleyville. Major Hoare said it would be a two-day operation to get him out and he could not manage it at present. In Brussels, Mr Paul-Henri

Spaak, the Belgian Foreign Minister, said last night that all but “a few tens” of in-surgent-held hostages had been accounted for and the Belgian airdrop operation in the Congo was “finished.” Paratroops who yesterday dropped on Paulis, from which 211 whites were later evacuated, had already begun withdrawing. They would be brought back to Belgium next week, he added.