MASS STARVATION Biafra Urges Cease-fire

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31728, 11 July 1968, Page 17

MASS STARVATION Biafra Urges Cease-fire

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LAGOS, July 10. Biafra has urged that a cease-fire in the Nigerian civil war is the only way of ending mass suffering among civilians in the beleaguered breakaway State.

In a statement reported last night by Radio Biafra, the leaders of the secessionist region again said relief supplies from Britain which has announced a £250,000 emergency aid grant—would not be accepted so long as the British Government continued its arms supplies to Lagos. The broadcast statement said Biafran acquiescence to the Federal demand for relief to be shipped in by land through “mercy corridors” would necessitate repairs to road bridges and the clearing of river channels which have been blocked to impede the Federal Army’s advance into the Ibo tribal country. “If this were done the statement went on, “Federal troops would rapidly advance into the Biafran-held area, but by that time thousands of people would have died; hence the case for a massive airlift” The statement repeated allegations that Federal authorities had poisoned food bound for Biafra, and that the British Government by continuing arms shipments to Lagos, was “intensifying the very conditions it pretends to relieve.” The Biafran statement was issued as a British relief

team of three, headed by the former Mount Everest climber Lord Hunt, returned from its first on-the-spot study in Nigeria’s mid-west of how to rush in the desparatelyneeded supplies of food and medicine. At least 600,000 people are reported to be in danger of starvation inside Biafra alone, and thousands more face the same situation in the Fed l eral-held fringe areas. “The effective means of saving this appalling situaation is an immediate ceasefire and the creation of conditions that would enable refugees to return to their homes,” the Biafran statement said. The Biafran leader (Lieu-tenant-Colonel Odutnegwu Ojukwu) was ready and willing to co-operate with any international organisation, including the Organisation of African Unity, in bringing about a cease-fire, the statement added. In London, decisions on use of Royal Air Force planes to fly relief supplies to the victims of the civil war await recommendations within the next few days from Lord Hunt’s mission. The British Government is expected to act quickly on implementing the mission's recommendations, but informed sources say suggestions that British planes might parachute aid supplies to the thousands of stricken people in Biafran-held territory are ruled out because there is no prospect of Nigerian agreement to such an operation.