Nigeria Launches Final Assault On Biafra

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 17

Nigeria Launches Final Assault On Biafra

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, August 27.

The Nigerian military leader (Lieutenant-General Yakubu Gowon) said last night that the final assault on breakaway Biafra began on Saturday.

General Gowon said m the British Broadcasting Corporation’s “24 Hours” programme that the military conquest of Biafra would be accomplished within four weeks. The final assault had been launched on alb-fronts and he was expecting at any time to receive news of the fall of Aba, the largest city remaining in Biafran hands. “We want to finish it off quickly for the sake of the suffering millions of people in rebel-held areas,” General Gowon said. “Then the rush-

ing-in of relief supplies will have top priority.” In Geneva yesterday the International Red Cross Committee reported that the neutral Red Cross airstrip in Biafra was bombed by Nigerian planes for the second time on Saturday. Seven relief workers were wounded, none seriously, but no Red Cross delegates were hurt.

Mr August Lindt, the Red Cross commissioner for Nigerian relief, raised the issue of the bombing of the air-

strip last Tuesday during talks in Geneva with the Nigerian Minister of Information (Chief Anthony Enahoro). The Red Cross resumed its twice-nightly mercy flights into Biafra from the Spanish island of Fernando Poo last week after having suspended them because its planes came under Are. Now the all-Swiss committee has announced that it is increasing its fleet of mercy planes on the Fernando PooBiafra run from one to five.